Chasing Serendipity
by sparkstoaflame
Summary: The chronicles of a restless heiress—an odd boy—and a girl who has a strange obsession with eternity. / korrasami friendship — au modern-era
1. Cycles

**update may 15, 2014** | updated chapter, as per the updates on _avatar wiki_ and _ao3._ many hugs, thanks, and virtual/tasteless oxygen cookies to **fruipit** for beta-ing! (you're the best, in case you didn't know. :D) the other edited chapters should be coming over the next few months. i'll make notes.

* * *

**Chasing Serendipity**

The chronicles of a restless heiress—an odd boy—and a girl who has a strange obsession with eternity. / _korrasami friendship_ — _au modern-era_

* * *

_cover image credit to _****fantendo . wikia . com****

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"I guess firstly—on chasing serendipity—can you really 'chase' and catch, the unexpected?"

.

**arc one/** cycles

.

.

/colorless smiles

that grace a god/

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(**i.** quirks)

.

It is a well-known fact that the small boy sitting in that half-broken desk over in the corner of your fifth-period study hall class is an oddball.

You see him in the library sometimes, this skinny little boy. He has wide, watery blue eyes and mousy dark hair; is always clutching a ratty cloth bag that serves as his lunchbox around with him every day. Your pathetic knowledge about him as a student and human being in general is limited to the fact that he's in the fourth grade, and that he's absolutely, undeniably bizarre. You've never met a little kid like him before and you don't think you ever will again.

Every day in the school library, you see his glassy eyes fixated devotedly onto a computer screen that reads _Wikipedia,_ while his bony index finger wreaks havoc upon the left click option of a greasy black mouse he holds tightly clutched in his hands like a lifeline. You watch him abuse the Random article link on the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and you watch him read about fruit pies, the twenty-fifth Avatar Jalin, and the ruins of Ba Sing Se.

He likes to play with his food before he eats it. Your gaggle of girlfriends giggle behind dainty hands that have been perfectly manicured and nails that have been treated with sparkly pink polish. They talk shrilly in high-pitched voices that sound like a cat-owl on helium and throw nastily indiscreet looks at the boy's way while you occupy yourself by examining your cuticles that you know haven't been broken in any way. Beside you, enough steaming gossip pours out past glossed lips to fill a twenty-gallon vat while this little boy dreamily dissects a piece of melon with a toothpick and remains blissfully unaware of the chatter circulating around him.

He goes home with another older kid, a girl, whom you've never seen around Republic City Central District before, but you think that she's around your age. Probably would have been in the eighth grade along with you. You have assumed this mystery figure to be the odd boy's family member, perhaps an older sister. You've never seen this sister's face before, though. You also notice that she keeps her head shoved underneath an oddly lumpy Fire Nation Volcanoes baseball cap all the time and you've only ever caught the briefest glimpse of a pair of blue eyes.

You don't even know why you watch this odd boy in the first place. He's queer and he's strange and he has never talked to you before in your life, ever. Sometimes, he turns around and smiles at you—but this must be because you're the only one who dares to sit within a ten-foot radius of him, and he smiles at everyone and everything anyways. And the smile is vacant, like it's been taped to his face, like he doesn't even know he's smiling.

Nevertheless, you constantly watch him, while your girlfriends squawk away about their latest crushes behind you. And on the last day of school, when that baseball-cap–wearing kid shows up to pick the little boy up like she normally does, the boy turns around and looks at you in your eyes and continues to smile passively—and maybe it's just you, but you hesitantly think that his smile it isn't _as_ blank as it normally is.

You raise your hand slowly, not exactly sure of what you should do in response, but even as your hand flops randomly around in a massively awkward wave, you see the boy's smile widen.

His sister turns and looks at you too, pushing up the hem of the dark red baseball with the knuckles of her right hand as if to take a better look at you—it's of little use, as the too-big cap immediately slips down over her eyes again and throws her face into shadow.

And you can still see her giving you an appraising once-over. It makes you feel oddly uncomfortable and wanting to shrivel up inside your skin; she apparently loses interest, and turns around to shepherd her younger brother out past the doors.

**.**

(**ii.** name)

**.**

The next year, when you enter the ninth grade, you still see the little boy everyone calls an oddball—he makes sure to give you that not-so-vacant smile every day, and you've finally found the courage to smile and wave back—but you don't really see much of his sister.

This makes you feel lost, for some reason or the other, but you don't dwell too much on it. You really don't have the time. Ninth grade, rather different than eighth, is really the true beginning of your high school years. Ninth grade is quite a mouthful, and it's definitely a hell of a lot more than eighth ever was.

Even as you stagger under the weight of a whole load of new textbooks the first day back at school, you seek to catch the little boy whenever you can—at lunch breaks, in between bells for classes—and he still continues to smile sweetly at you but never speaks a word, even if you offer to help him with his homework.

Your friends—sometimes, you wonder why you still call them your friends—sneer at him behind his back but you don't have the heart to stop them after about the first twenty times they ignored your meek protests.

_Look at the way he walks,_ one of the especially vindictive ones, Miki, smirks. _He's like a lame otter-penguin!_

_You've never even seen an otter-penguin,_ you mumble under your breath, but your remark is lost among the babble of agreement pulsing around you.

_What kind of old bitch would have given birth to a retard like that,_ Miki viciously continues to monologue, and you can't help but wince violently at her words, almost knocking over your carton of milk.

_Oh, Miki...come on, don't say things like that_—you try to reason with a hopeless cause.

She only pouts loudly, large green eyes glinting with some sort of cruel pleasure that twists your stomach up into a knot. _How can you say that, 'Sami? Just look at him!_

You look over at the boy eating his lunch and then blink back at Miki with what you think is a confused look on your face.

_You know, 'Sami, I don't even know why you, like, try and talk to him,_ Miki says, leaning over the table and not even noticing a puddle of spilled brown chocolate milk sinking into the right sleeve of her two-hundred-yuan sweater, _it's not as if he can understand you or anything._

You sit up and announce dramatically—_I've got to go sandwich thing._

Miki superiorly raises a thin pencil eyebrow at you.

You flush and scamper away, the soles of your shoes squeaking against the freshly waxed cream-colored floor.

While you wait on line to get that sandwich from one of those grumpy old cafeteria ladies that smell like cats all the time, the little boy wanders up to you, a plastic carton of his lunch clutched in his hand. Vaguely, you realize that he holds it like he does his black computer mouse.

His smile is hitched on his face and it doesn't move even as he opens his mouth to say, _Akua._

You blink rapidly at him, because whatever you'd been expecting him to do—you're not even sure—it definitely wasn't to speak: '_Scuse me?_

_My name is Akua,_ he smiles, and his voice is light and feathery and innocent, although it had a strange accent to it that you've never really heard before—sharp and almost guttural, containing the harsh sounds of winter within its tones. _Alqaq tells me it means "god" in Winter Tongue._

You bite your lower lip, not sure what to say in response to his strange proclamation. _Um...Winter Tongue? And "alqaq"?_

_Oh, yes. Alqaq. She still remembers you, you know. She cannot come to pick me up this year, Alqaq, because she is working in the evenings now. Underground._ He pauses. _Not that Aana or Ata know about it. Ata works many hours a week on the fishing boats and Aana is too busy working in the city. They just appreciate the money. She told me not to tell. But you would not tell anyone, would you?_ Then he smiles passively at you after uttering this cryptic remark, lowering his gaze before he meanders back to his empty table to eat his slices of pale green winter melon.

You turn away, confused, with the passing thought that the little boy always eats winter melon.

**.**

(**iii.** overwhelmed)

**.**

At fifteen, your first date asks you out.

He's a hot hunk of a boy—or so Miki tells you, but you haven't really taken anything she's said seriously after that conversation about Akua about a year ago, back in ninth grade—with the blood of those who lived in the Fire Nation running through his veins, very much like yourself. The difference is where all differences emerge from: you couldn't produce a flicker of flame to save your life, yet he was one the many who could bend fire.

You concede to the fact that he _is_ good-looking, and he _is_ very mild-mannered, but you date him with a mild disinterest anyways and by the end of forty-eight hours you don't even know why you said yes to his proposal in the first place.

So you break up with him—_um, I don't think that this is going to work out; we can barely look at each other in the eye_—and a day later rumor had it that he was crying in a bathroom stall when he was supposed to be in his fourth period Integrated Algebra class with Professor Bao.

You know you should feel guilty about it, but all you are is relieved.

And still relieved you were when you stumbled across an article while perusing Republic City Junior High's very own newsletter, some opinion column or the other that talked about a child's disappearance from her home one foggy night.

Normally, such an article wouldn't have captured your interest for more than two seconds, but something about this one makes you stop and blink twice, because there's a grainy picture shunted to the very corner of the article depicting a small girl wandering the streets of what looked like the Otter Falls Borough, a predominantly Water Tribe sector of Republic City. The article mentions something about autism, and then explains how the girl went missing for two days before the police found her mutilated remains in a ditch in the outskirts of the borough.

They were still searching for the murderer.

You can't make out this girl's face, but it's clear that she's Water Tribe.

You almost run into one of the concrete pillars that stand grandly in front of the school the next morning when you see Akua wandering into the middle set of doors like he normally does. But his eyes are glassier and more fearful than usual, and although he remains very quiet in his way, he doesn't smile at anyone the whole day. Not even you.

And by the time the last bell rings, his sister's dutifully there to pick him up from the school again, despite him being thirteen and in the eighth grade. You watch on quietly as several groups of people whisk by, leaving the ghosts of their giggles behind with the churning wind as Akua, clearly shaking as violently as a leaf in a gale, all but leaps into his sister's waiting arms, burying his small mousy head into her shoulder while she apparently mumbles platitudes to him underneath that damned red baseball cap.

The people still whizzing by in a blur around you apparently found the scene very funny—there's this tiny teenage boy sobbing in the arms of a girl barely a year older than him—but you, you only find it disturbing. Very disturbing. There's an unidentifiable sinking feeling in your chest as you watch on, transfixed by this scene, and there's something odd starting to burn past your eyes when Miki shakes you and asks you if you've ever seen a more pathetic sight in your life.

This breaks you out of your frozen reverie, but you don't—you can't—do anything more than push roughly past Miki, turn away with your head bowed down, and walk slowly towards your bus with the image of Akua sobbing and breaking down into a mess in his sister's arms branded forever in your mind.

**.**

(**iv.** talk)

**.**

Out of every charge to get arrested on, he gets thrown into a juvenile delinquent center for _illegal street fighting._

You haven't given much thought to your first ex-boyfriend after you broke up with him four months ago. You've walled him from your mind; mortared into place thick slabs of concrete to prevent him from ever penetrating into your thoughts ever again.

You don't know why. (But then again, you don't know why you do a lot of things these days.) It could be guilt, but why would you feel guilty about the break-up if you didn't like him? It could be shame, but what is there to be shameful of?

But it's impossible to avoid the buzzing gossip and rumors that are circling around the school within day two of the article in the school paper had been published.

You had pretty much avoided reading the paper after reading that article about the little autistic girl whose body had been found dead and brutally maimed in a trench, so you hadn't even heard about the news until Miki cornered you one day in between second and third period, her golden eyes blazing with unprecedented excitement while she practically froths at the mouth.

Shaking your shoulders in a violently useless attempt to convey to you the importance of the information, she hollers into your rather alarmed face, _Your ex-boyfriend's been arrested!_

You're in a hurry to get to Professor Beifong's honors chemistry class, and you aren't eager to be late after that last time she scolded you for two minutes for being tardy in front of twenty-seven other giggling sophomore grade students.

So you reply in a maddeningly patient tone, _Okay,_ and try to shove past her to ascend the stairs. She sidesteps to the right and her backpack hits you on the arm.

_Okay? "Okay?!" That's all you can say?! Come on, 'Sami, this is, like—_

You grind your teeth so forcefully against each other that you think you might have chipped a molar. _I've got to get to class. We can talk about this later, okay?_

_Psh!_ Miki waves an impatient hand. _Class can wait. How can you not be excited about this?_

You heave an upset sigh as the obnoxious blare of the bell rips mercilessly through the air. You count off a full five seconds before the bell stops shrieking and before you're sure you've controlled yourself enough to not rip off Miki's pretty head.

_All right. Mako got arrested...on what, exactly? He doesn't do drugs or anything like that, does he?_ You say this purely for Miki's entertainment, even as your fingers worry themselves against each other, crossing and uncrossing themselves into increasingly sweaty shapes.

_You know those illegal underground street fights that sometimes go 'round the slum boroughs?_ asks Miki while you try to think of smart ways to circumvent her and get to honors chemistry before Professor Beifong can blow a few gaskets. _Apparently, the police broke one of them up today. Lots of people ran off, but...he was one of the unlucky ones._

_Er, this relates to me in any sort of way, how?_ you shoot off desperately as a reply. _I really have to go now._

_But—_

You blow her off, blatant impatience creeping into your tone like an approaching thunderstorm. _Miki, I really have to get to class. I'll see you later._

You almost sprint into a wall in your eagerness to get away.

**.**

(**v.** breaking)

**.**

The problem with playing a covert game of hide-and-seek that concerns your social life with a random person—in this case the person being your father—is that sometimes, that person finds out you're playing a covert game of hide-and-seek with them.

You're sitting in front of your desk, wedged uncomfortably between such a massive pile of school textbooks and homework that workloads of that size should have been declared illegal, and the new Lychee laptop you received for your birthday three months back when your father ambushes you—_Asami?_

And at his voice, you jump in your seat and knock your coffee cup over, the lukewarm brown liquid pooling all over your half-finished homework as you wheel around to stare at your father in shock because he has never checked in on you while you were studying before. He's always too busy and has to attend business meetings and seems to come up with a new excuse every week for why he doesn't pay enough (any) attention to you. That being said, you've long since given up attempting to ask for his help on a particularly daunting math problem, trying to get his fleeting attention.

_Asami?_ he asks you again before pulling up a chair that's been pushed carelessly to the side of your study and dragging it over to your desk so he can sit to the side and eye you with concern. _Are you alright?_

You blink in confusion: this is not the statement you had been expecting him to pose to you. Um...yeah. I'm fine. Why do you ask?

His dark amber eyes probe at your face. _You've grown quieter. Is there something going on at school?_

You can feel your lips pulling themselves down into a small frown. _Er, no?_

Your uncertain answer seems to reaffirm whatever suspicions he has about your perfectly normal life.

_I heard that the firebender boy you were dating—Mako, was it?—had gotten arrested._

Your lips thin into a severe line, with the passing thought of _Does everyone know about this?_ before you reply in a measured voice,_And?_

_Asami, I don't want you to fraternize with those sorts of people again,_ your father seriously says, shifting slightly in his seat so that the sun flashes merrily off of his highly polished glasses.

Your voice has acquired a sharp edge that you desperately but unsuccessfully attempt to flatten—_Oh? And what do you mean by "those people?"_

_I mean benders, Asami,_ your father says back in an equally sharp voice that he immediately attempts to honey down. _Don't you see? They cause nothing but trouble and get themselves arrested—_

_Mako,_ you say through gritted teeth as you only now begin to sop the coffee off of your completely ruined homework, _was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time._

You're not quite sure why you're trying to defend your ex, but there's something in your father's voice that just sets you off—the distaste and mocking incredulity in it sends freezing lances of ice tearing down your spine.

Your father only frowns at you. _He was caught in one of those underground street fighting rings, Asami. In the middle of a bout._

You only shrug ruefully, vigorously scrubbing at your desk and peeling your ruined homework pages away from one another with such meticulous care it's as if it's the most important job you've ever undertaken.

_Stay away from them, all right?_ your father continues to monologue, not the least bit aware that you're trying hard to tune him out. _I don't want you getting caught up their nonsense. Now, I have to go. I have a phone conference in five minutes._

And he gives you one last, warm smile that you don't bother to return (not that he notices or anything) before he ambles out of your study.

.

(**vi.** question)

.

An uncharacteristically foul temper has caught hold of you by the next day—a temper that had been brought on by your lack of sleep (for you had attempted to copy and complete all your homework; after about thirty tedious minutes, you pretty much gave up on it) and your irritation at your father's remarks—something that everyone immediately catches onto when you oh-so-discreetly slam your bulging backpack besides your desk at the start of first-period Integrated Algebra II/Trigonometry Theory class.

Professor Bao throws you an extraordinarily scandalized look before continuing to make his way around the rows of desks, boldly wielding his clipboard and pencil of death as he interrogates his hapless students for their assignments. You indifferently accept the irritated furrowing of Professor Bao's eyebrows when he notices your utter lack of homework. He makes a very obvious tick mark on his clipboard before swooping upon Miki.

You struggle through five agonizingly slow periods in a haze of tiredness before lunch humbly offers itself to you as a welcome respite from the mundane regularities of attending classes all morning. Immediately collapsing onto a chair at an empty table—not your usual one—you stretch your arms out in front of you before letting your head drop into the soft cradle it has created.

_...Asami Sato?_

Your head immediately shoots up from your arms as you take in the sight of a small, pointed face and clear blue eyes—_Oh. _Oh,_hi, Akua,_ and after saying this you run a self-conscious hand through your disheveled locks, _Um, am I sitting in your—?_

He shakes his head slowly and easily settles down next to you, opening his small plastic carton of lunch. You take one look at the slices of pale green melon and stupidly bluster, _Do you always eat winter melon?_

He nods seriously, although the smile on his thin face pretty much ruins the effect. _Yes. It is the only thing we have in abundance back home._

_Well,_ you continue flatly, and in your defense you're not even quite sure what's coming out of your mouth half the time today, _you can't buy lunch or anything? I mean, you can't be getting enough nutrients from just that—_

_The lunch here costs too much,_ he baldly states.

You slam your lips together and feel burning heat creeping its deliberate way up your cheeks. _Oh. I—I'm sorry._

He looks at you quizzically, pushing a slice of melon into his mouth—_For what?_

_Well—I didn't mean—_ And you splutter incoherently, sure that your whole face must have turned a brilliant shade of crimson by this point.

Akua only shrugs, seemingly catching on to your pitiful attempt to explain yourself: _My family is among the many that can only manage to scrape by in Republic City, Asami. It is not that big of a deal._

You frown rather doubtfully—_Er...It costs quite a bit of money to attend this school._

Akua's omnipresent smile flickers ever so slightly, but he immediately hitches it up again before replying, _Alqaq takes care of that._

You would like to inquire into this strange situation further, but decide that you've prodded enough into his personal life for today and simply watch Akua finish his lunch.

_She almost got arrested a few days ago,_ Akua randomly mumbles after an empty pause through a mouthful of fruit, and you jump a little at his unexpected remark.

_What?_ you ask.

_It was in the newspaper,_ Akua continues in a rather vague tone of voice, his blue eyes fixated upon some point in the distance, _her friend got caught, though._

You bolt upright in your chair at his last words and practically bleat out, _Friend? Mako?!_

He glances at you, surprise clouding his innocent blue gaze. _Yes, him. Mako. His brother—Bolin—stays with us on the weekends, actually._ He suddenly grins even wider. _I think that they have a thing going on._

You almost have a coronary—_I'm sorry?!_

_Hmm? Oh, did you take it as "Mako and Bolin have a thing going on?" No, no, of course not. That is incestuous beyond belief._ He laughs, a light and tinkling sound that reminds you strangely of bells. _I meant—Bolin and Korra._

_Err..."Korra?"_ You frown at the unfamiliar name.

He nods. _Alqaq._

Your eyes as wide as saucers, you stare at an increasingly puzzled Akua, half-stunned and half-giddy at how absurdly coincidental this situation actually is.

Akua holds your gaze for a moment longer before he seems to resign himself to the fact that you, in truth, are a crazy psycho who enjoys staring at other people ceaselessly. Ducking his mousy head down, he reaches into his ratty, brown leather bag and pulls out a large square piece of midnight blue cloth, as well as something that looks like a half-completed elastic sock with large circular holes on either end.

You nod at the half-sock—_So, what's that?_

Akua turns it over in his hands, handling it with great care and caution. _It is a gift._

You try to make heads and tails of this unusual object—_Um, is it a sock?_

He gives you a look that contains the tiniest hint of reproach in it, and you wince, feeling utterly ignorant and even slightly racist.

_A ceremonial armband,_ Akua quietly explains, turning back to the object and laying it carefully on the thick blue piece of cotton.

Upon closer examination, you see the pattern that has started to form upon this armband—a stripe that is a light, pale blue color, above of which are alternating triangles of a slightly darker blue and white, with a dot of the opposite color at the widened end of each shape.

_Who's it for?_

He stares at it for a long moment, his thin fingers still lovingly stroking their way over the fabric, and then for whatever reason, slowly nods at you: _It's for her. For Korra._

.

(**tbc**)


	2. Souls

**update may 22, 2014** | once again, thanks to **fruipit** for beta-ing.

* * *

**Chasing Serendipity**

The chronicles of a restless heiress—an odd boy—and a girl who has a strange obsession with eternity. / _korrasami friendship_ — _au modern-era_

* * *

**arc two/** souls

.

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/spreading wings

toward eternal freedom/

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(**vii.** wood)

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The playground has a swing set and a set of rusted old monkey bars in front of it.

You aren't quite sure how old that swing set and the playground is, only that it's been around for at least as long as you've been alive, because you used to come here with your mother at least twice a week before she died.

It isn't as if you've ever really thought about how old it is, merely that it has crossed your mind just now.

And this playground—it's the one that lies in the furthest corner of the universe, beneath the yellowed oak trees with the jungle of weeds and crabgrass brushing gingerly over its roots, the one that's made of the dusty old wood and rusted old nails.

However, you know that this swing set is undeniably old. You can tell from the way the wind moves it—the way it moans and groans as it is shifted back and forth and side to side, depending on the way the wind decides to blow. You can tell from the way the vines creep up the poles with confidence and grace, daring enough to drape down from the top as if they are trapeze artists—and only old swing sets have confident ivy.

The wood feels grainy and dusty as your fingers probe against it, the worry of splinters and fire ants somewhere far back in your mind. You hesitate for a moment, and then run the very tips of your fingers up and down its spine. You can't decide whether its texture reminds you of your silky comforter after it has been sitting in the golden sunlight, pouring through your window on a summer day, or of the cool and wet sand that tickles and scrapes your bare, calloused feet when you tread in the surf. You can't tell, but you don't mind. You're simply greeting this swing set like an old friend after having abandoned it for some eleven years.

A small breeze flutters by, running its fingers through your hair. Then, jealous that your attention is driven from it, the chains jerk a little and squeal in annoyance. The sound is petulant, but it is not entirely unpleasant. You brush some of the dirt off the thin plastic seat. It has grayed with age and dust. You sit down on it—and the swing set sighs in effortless protest, for it has seen enough children and autumn days to last most lifetimes.

You wrap your hands around the rusted chains as if you were gripping pieces of chalk. The chains remind you of sandpaper, fine and scratchy as it nips at your palms. And you sit there for a few moments, staring blankly into the distance at nothing in particular. You're perfectly content to wallow around in your memories, the ones that rang with laughter and the feeling of your mother's hands pushing you higher and higher up into the air while you screamed with delight.

In a sudden burst of nostalgia, you dig your heels into the ground, locking your knees in place before letting them give way beneath you. The air erupts with the smell of damp earth and cold air and raked leaves and dirty wood that would feel grainy if you happened to touch it.

You thrust your legs back and forth to go higher and higher; the swing creaks and grumbles with lassitude. The rickety legs of the swing set begin to shift and shake as you pull the chains back and forth with each arc of your kick. Extending a hand to the sky, you try to push further, but the chains tire out and release the strength that held you up, sending you crashing down from the seat. You come skidding back down to the earth in an unceremonious heap, your heels turning up the roots of the new dandelions that have yet to bloom and allow small children to make wishes on them.

The swing set sighs yet again, content with the ceasing of motion. You see that the sun is setting from where you lie eagle-sprawled on the ground, your shoes and your clothes absolutely ruined, but you don't really care, so enraptured by the sunset you are. Your garments are replaceable. This sunset is not.

You're still staring at the sunset when she ambushes you from above, complete with a loud laugh that rips through the air like a gunshot.

.

(**viii.** beginning)

.

The girl hangs upside down from the rusted monkey bars in front of you and seems to be enjoying herself a little too much.

Wavy locks of long and coarse brown hair cascade past the sides of her dark face, framing a pair of cobalt eyes that must have drawn their essence from the vast ocean itself, and suddenly you can't seem to draw in a proper breath, because you've never really seen her eyes before and they're so _blue_. Everything about her looks raw; primal, even—totally _open _in a way that you've never quite managed to be.

It's clear that she's one of those immigrants to the city from the rapidly-fading Water Tribes that live in sequestered bands at the poles, given her dark skin and ragged blue parka that isn't very appropriate for Republic City's mild climate at all—perhaps for the winter, yes, but not now, during the very early days of autumn. Two bunches of her hair have been pulled into what you assume are tribal ornaments from where they dangle limply in the crawling breeze. The rest of her locks have been left unattended and wild.

The Fire Nation Volcanoes baseball cap that usually sits on her head is noticeably absent.

As you take her appearance in, Akua's older sister whom you haven't seen in since last year grins wolfishly at you, a grin that clashes most distinctly with the somber atmosphere the old, creaking trees and dry stalks of grass that surround this little playground exude. Her eyes glitter brightly, almost hungrily in the ruddy light of the setting sun, and as mesmerizing as those eyes are, the look they hold within their depths disturbs you much more.

You have a feeling that someone's told you her name before, but you can't quite remember what it is—and you honestly don't care to at the moment.

You scoot away from her before she can open her mouth to start a conversation.

It doesn't work, because your aversion seems to have been the prompt she had been waiting for to speak—_So, how many bottles of hair gel a day do you go through?_

She asks you this random question conversationally, but you can't concentrate on her words because her grin still has a painfully ravenous look about it. You feel like you've heard her voice before, too, somewhere, and then realize with a start that she has the same accent Akua spoke with that one time he actually talked with you, although it's definitely less prominent in this girl's tone.

You jump in your place on the scratchy ground, one of your hands almost unconsciously drifting up to flatten your glossy black tresses. You look around and see no way to escape this dangerous situation without being immensely awkward about it.

_I mean, you don't have to answer _that—and this spirits-damned girl doggedly insists on trying to carry on a conversation with you._ I was just wondering. Because I couldn't help noticing how your hair,_ and she gestures towards your hair, _is prettier than Tahno's. And Tahno goes through about four every morning. It's all for his new coif, you know._

You aren't sure whether she's just really bad at making casual conversation, or if she's actually trying to flirt with you, so you open your mouth and say something along the lines of _geddwayfroeme._

She flashes her teeth again, and this time her eyes catch the last few feeble rays that the sun has thrown out. _Don't worry_, _pretty girl,_ she tells you. You're not reassured in the least by what she says next:_ I don't bite._

And so you ask her, in an unnecessary flat tone, what she's doing here.

She lets her arms drop to the sides of her head, her calloused fingertips lightly brushing against the sides of your pale cheeks that immediately bloom with spots of light pink. And despite yourself, you shudder involuntarily at her touch even as you flinch away.

_I don't know,_ she says, eying your scandalized expression. She's evidently amused by your abrupt reaction, chortling while she draws her hands back up to squeeze the corroded metal bar above her before she swings down, lightly landing on a pair of feet that are covered by decrepit sealskin boots. _I could ask the same of you._

You sniff and ask her if she always responds to people's questions with more questions.

_No, not really,_ and she smiles even wider at this—it occurs to you that you've not seen her stop smiling _once_ since you've met her, and it irks you for some reason—_just for you, sweetheart._

_Don't call me "sweetheart,"_ you mutter.

_Oh, I can't call you that? Then tell me, what's your name?_

You don't answer her, instead letting the blustering wind fill in the empty space between the two of you.

She's leaning against the wooden support of the swing set now, arms loosely folded across her chest while she stares down at you squirming before idly saying, _If it helps any, Akua can't stop talking about you._

You ask her who Akua is for the sake of asking, even though you've known the answer for some odd five years.

_You're a...sophomore, right? He's a couple grades below you. _She shrugs, and you notice that she has never stopped looking at you while she said all these words, and you get the feeling that your every little move is being analyzed. _He's a bit _eccentric_, if I say so myself._ She laughs—a short, acerbic laugh that's more of a bark than anything. _Can't say I blame him for that, though..._

And while she's in the middle of saying that, you blurt out, _How come I never see you at school?_

Her smile instantly turns frosty and you regret asking immediately. But she answers anyways—_because I don't go._

_Why not?_ You can't stop your mouth from churning forth more inquiries.

She carelessly snubs your question and wiggles her fingers in a taunting wave instead. _Well, I have to go now. Can't be late for the bout. I expect I'll see you here tomorrow, Asami. You'll be here, won't you?_

And she's off, with the question of how she even knew your name dying on your lips.

.

(**ix.** shadow)

.

She's waiting for you the next day, as you find out, for your feet have, in regards to some odd reason only known to them, carried you back to that playground in the furthest corner of the universe you used to visit every day with your mother before she died.

_I didn't come here for you,_ you bluntly inform her as you sit heavily down onto a swing with the air of an artificially grumpy temper whirling around you.

_I see that someone's very happy to see me,_ she only grins cheekily back, ambling over to lean against the wooden support beams of the swing set once more.

You slowly twist your hands around the gritty chains of the swing, savoring in the rough feeling of the aged metal scraping against your skin. _What do you want with me?_

She tilts her head as if to observe you again with those too-blue eyes. They bore into your green ones, and you snap your head back down, quite flustered, even as the soft sound of her chuckle floats lazily through the air.

_Well. For starters—I'd like to know more about you. Tell me about yourself._

And you ask her, without daring to look back up, _Why?_

She cocks her head. _Is it such a crime just to be interested in you, Asami Sato?_

You self-consciously flatten some creases in your dark brown jacket. _How do you know my name?_

_Now look who's answering questions with more questions,_ she only laughs before sticking a hand out into your face. _Look, how about I introduce myself first? I'm—_

_Alqaq,_ you guess.

Now she starts, lowering her hand to let it fall limply by her side. Deep crevices mar her smooth forehead as she scrunches her expression together into a look of utmost confusion: _Alqaq? You speak Winter Tongue?_ Then she spits something out in a dialect that you most definitely cannot understand, but have heard running in an undertone beneath her words—much less prominent than Akua's accent when he spoke in Common Tongue, you note.

_Er, n-no; Akoo—I mean, Akua's...talked about you—before,_ you gracelessly explain, given that your words are tripping over your own tongue.

She nods, her expression unreadable, reverting back to the language you can actually decipher: _Oh. Well, _"alqaq"_ means _"older sister of a male"_ in the Winter Tongue. I'm Korra._ And then she hitches her smile back onto her face and thrusts her hand in front of your chest again.

A brief memory flashes through your head, reminding you that yes, you actually _did_ know her name—that time when you and Akua sat together in the cafeteria, he had mentioned the name 'Korra.'

After a moment's hesitation, you loosely take her offered hand, feeling rough callouses rubbing against your pale skin as you give it a brief shake before abruptly letting it drop down again.

There is no sort of _electric spark_ passing between the two of you, but you feel much more comfortable around her, anyway.

_So I've told you my name, now,_ Korra says, her eyes still sparkling like a rabid wolf's. _Tell me more about you._

And you ask yet again, because you still don't entirely trust this girl, this Korra, _Why?_

She smiles even wider. _Well, I like to talk about myself, something or the other, with certain people_, she replies. _And in return, they talk about themselves to me._

_'Certain people,'_ you carefully note.

She only plucks at a blade of grass by her feet, idly running a fingernail down its center before turning to you again, those strange blue eyes now shining with thinly concealed mirth. _How about I put it this way: Sell me your soul, and I'll sell you mine._

.

(**x.** secret)

.

You begin to notice, after a few weeks of those sorts of one-on-one talks that you just fell into the habit of conducting (as well as a few days where you had unashamedly stalked this girl to the playground), that she has a habit of visiting the tiny park every day, this Korra. She's there with the sun and there with the rain; there with the trees and there with the wind: every day, really, without fail. Even when you tell her _you_ aren't going to be there, you spot her—because in actuality, you just tend to hide out in the ring of scraggly trees that surround this decrepit area so you can simply observe her sitting on top of the monkey bars for a while.

You have since told her a little about your late mother and your invisible attachment to this area; for all Korra goes on about talking about herself, she has yet to tell you her reasons for visiting this unremarkable corner of the universe.

_Well, um—you see,_ she had told you after you alluded to that very question one day, _I used to think that this place was known to only myself. I came here a lot, even before you started to show up, too._ She still had that damned smile on her face that you've never seen fall off, but it'd been brought down a few notches and was tinged with a most peculiar emotion, for Korra at least—more so melancholy and pensive than anything, and then she added quite randomly—_sometimes, I don't think I pay enough attention to him._ And then she refused to speak another word on the matter, and you just dropped it, because who were you to press her, when you know that you yourself often said things that are meant to be explained only with time?

And you—you still don't know what to make of Korra. She's almost something exotic to you, something strange—you don't know why she even tries to talk with you, you don't know any of her motives, you haven't even really gotten a measure of her sum _personality_ even though she smiles a lot and makes more cracks at others than anyone you have ever met in your life.

You know that she's caring—that much is certain, with what you've seen and how she acts around Akua. You know that she likes her little jokes—but so do you, and pretty much everyone else that you know.

But there's still something eternally _hidden_ from you in those bright blue eyes that constantly smile and laugh; something veiled in that hungry smile that doesn't even seem so _hungry_ to you anymore, but simply _famished_. Famished for what—now, of course, you don't know, just like how you still don't know what her favorite food is nor when she wakes up every morning. Does she want human contact? Harmless chatter? Friendship? You don't know, and it disturbs you. You can't make head nor tail of it, and you _want_ to know what it really is.

The thing is, your brain is used to the idea of understanding people, and understanding them well—it's something you're known for, this handy little ability—but you've never encountered someone quite like Korra, or even Akua before. So you find yourself constantly thinking of exactly why you come to this playground to meet her and what she has to gain from doing it, too.

To your absolute horror, you're desperate enough to fantasize about the idea of Korra being a vampire, or a werewolf like one of those characters in that sappy romance novel—_Twilight_, was it called?—that is all the rage at the moment, and then immediately dismiss the thought as ludicrous.

After much desperate rambling to yourself in your brain, you have to concede that—no, you don't _really_ understand Korra at all.

But that doesn't stop you from coming back to the playground that's shunted in the corner of the universe every day.

.

(**xi.** life)

.

Korra asks you one day in the middle of the morning how you feel about the stars.

You're a bit put off by this question, as you don't have an opinion on them either way, so you tell her that you think that they're really pretty.

_They are, aren't they?_ she thoughtfully says, letting her eyes drift up to the cloudy, light blue sky before she flinches back away, squinting against the blinding light of the sun. _In the Water Tribes, we believe that the stars are the spirits of the dead. That the souls of our forefathers are still up there, somewhere...still watching over us. Protecting us. _Living_ with us._ Her lips twist into a smile that's touched with bitterness before she mumbles in a voice so quiet that you're not sure if she meant for you to hear, _They're up there for eternity._

You glance up at the very blue and very starless sky before vaguely commenting that you're bothered by the concept of eternity.

At your remark, you notice that Korra, rather strangely, is giving you an exceedingly severe look—her facial expression pinches in very odd manner. It looks as if she's bitten into a lemon and is trying to hold its caustic juices within her mouth—and her eyes gleam like hard blue iron. Her smile has slipped right off her face, only to be replaced by a too-bitter frown that tells you this isn't the first time she's worn an expression that isn't all sunshine and happiness.

_What?_ you ask uncertainly, quickly averting your eyes so you don't have to meet her terribly bright glare. _What'd I say?_

She starts—shoulders jerking up a hair, head shaking as if she's trying to clear it—and she immediately looks back down in her lap as if she's abashed, the flicker of a smile pulling unsuccessfully at the corners of her lips. _Um, sorry._

_No, no._ You lean closer to her and off-handedly notice that she smells very faintly like sea spray—it isn't unpleasant, but it's an odor peculiar enough—or at least one you'd never smelled before—that you reel back a little bit. _Err...what do you like about eternity so much?_

_Well,_ she carefully says, and it's almost as if she's swirling the words around her mouth, tasting them to make sure they're neither unpleasant nor rotten before she let them flow past her lips, _have you...ever wondered what it would be like if—if you were immortal?_

You shrug—it is a fantasy that you had entertained when you were but a child, but you have long since abandoned the whimsical idea to collect dust on a back shelf in your memories. _Yes. Of course I have, albeit a long time ago. Why—do you want to live forever?_

Once again, Korra doesn't answer you immediately. You watch her eyes drift up towards the sky again, cerulean orbs resting upon the wispy clouds that race over your heads, before they drop back down and come crashing to the earth—_When I was a little younger,_ she says, her voice detached and free-floating through the cool air, _my father asked me what I was scared of most in the world. And I said death._ She takes a deep breath and holds it for a few seconds, before her cheeks puff out and she lets the waiting air back into the brisk breeze as a shuddering exhale. _Not just my own, but other people's, too. Maybe even more so. I hate death. I hate everything about it. I hate funerals. I hate how it makes me think that I've fa—_

She briefly touches her fingers to her temples, obviously deciding against what she was about so say. _I hate the feeling it brings...the sheer hopelessness. It's—you can't _fight_ against it,_ and she wrings her hands in blatant frustration before throwing them in front of herself in a violent gesture, _it just comes to you. Like—like you're blowing out a candle. And then—poof._ She gesticulates forcefully with her arms, expanding them in a circular arc and almost hitting you in the face before clapping them together loudly. _It's gone. Just like that. The creature, the person that just died—it disappears. There'll never be another being like it._

Your eyebrows meet at the top of the bridge of your nose—_So, what you're telling me is, you hate death and the _finality_ it brings with it? That's a form of eternity, Korra._

_I know, I know,_ Korra snaps shortly, running a distracted hand through her hair—her mind is obviously on something a million miles away, something you can't see (not that _this_ is anything new), not smack dab in the present like it usually is, _I just...if we were immortal, death wouldn't be able to ever—hurt anyone again._

_Korra,_ and you say this gently, _if anything in this world was destined to live forever, then they would live forever. But nothing does. We're simply not made to be—_

_No!_ Korra slams her fist onto the grassy ground in frustration, her eyes glittering with some veiled, frantic emotion, before she sobers down, her rage disappearing as quickly as it appeared. _I mean,_ and she takes a few more breaths, _I mean, just if it was..._

You study her with concern because you don't understand her cryptic remarks in the slightest—_Korra, are you feeling alright?_

She stares at you for a few seconds, the shadow of her former resentment still rearing up like a beast inside those flickering blue eyes and the drawn-together eyebrows: _Ye—no,_ she mutters, turning away from you again.

You watch her fingers worry themselves against each other and on anything they can reach—tearing up the grass, picking at her worn-down sweatpants—and then she says in a horribly flat tone of voice, _Ata—Father was called back to the fishing boats. _Again._ And the overseers said that he could get a month off._

_...Oh?_ you whisper, not trusting yourself to say anything more in case something even vaguely insensitive comes out of your mouth.

She's still staring at you with those strikingly blue eyes, eyes that flicker for but a moment with an emotion you can't pin down—then she screws her eyes shut and coughs, steals a hurried glance at the line of trees behind the two of you, and takes a sharp breath—then her expression turns dead once more, eyes opening to reveal passive cobalt irises.

Your breath catches in your throat even as Korra turns to look at the ground again.

_I love my family,_ she says in that same flat tone of voice, something that's so blank and emotionless that you know there's _something_ she's fighting to keep hidden underneath the sheet of monolithic nothingness, _I've stuck with them through everything—no matter how great the _offers_ that came from others. _She pauses. _I don't want them gone from my life, any of them. They've given me so much, I don't want to _fail _them in any way. I wouldn't—I'd never le..._want_ them to—_

She suddenly becomes very interested in something next to her shoe.

The two of you sit there in a heavy silence—the breeze running its soft fingers through your hair, as you silently watch the sun dully gleam off the pitted and rusted metal of the monkey bars.

Her voice pipes up again, carried by the wind—_I'm sorry, Asami._

There's something in her voice—some odd undertone, an awkward slip of the syllable—that you immediately look up in confusion, but there's nothing there but the two of you and the wind and a strange glint in Korra's azure eyes probing your face.

_You're too paranoid,_ you silently chide yourself before you ask Korra, _For what?_

_...I—for snapping at you._

Both of you know that's a lie, but you don't press her buttons.

_I've got to go,_ she says, and there's the same odd note to her voice—but you only nod your goodbye and watch as her figure gets smaller and smaller with each step; she vaults over the wooden fence—and she's gone.

.

(**xii.** sudden)

.

By the time it's a healthy one year old, your (friendly and strictly _platonic,_ although some people tended to think otherwise) relationship with Korra hasn't gone unnoticed by your peers nor your family, no matter how hard you had tried to cover up your tracks.

This, in and on itself, would have been annoying and simply tedious to cope with—as you'd have to had answered a lot of awkward questions—and it is annoying, but after you've beat off all the questions from your inner circle, the outside world begins to notice too:

_What's a pretty heiress like you doing, wandering around with a Water Tribe scamp from the slums?_

The ugly fact remains that most of Republic City's denizens hail from either the old lands of the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom—you certainly do from the former—and there is quite a bit of hostility directed towards the minority, those who are obviously descended from the Water Tribes, with their stark blue eyes and dark brown skin. And for some strange reason that you can't make heads nor tails of, they were largely considered to be primitive and stupidly simple. Racism and similar prejudices run rampant throughout the city, even to this day.

Your peers and family apparently don't hold this twisted ideal in their minds. You notice that Miki's much more invested in her nails and voluminous locks of hair than she is discriminatory against solely Water Tribe immigrants, and most of your other friends don't give two shits about ethnicities and whatnot. Neither does your father, despite his healthy distaste for absolutely anything that had remotely to do with _benders _or _bending_.

You've never gotten a look at this discrimination first-hand. You've read about it, of course (it's been almost two years and you still can't get that newspaper article out of your head), and you've certainly _heard_ about it too, from civil rights groups, but you've never witnessed it, nor do you really want to.

Then, Korra asks you one day if you're up for walking around her home streets with her.

_Come on, it's in broad daylight. The Otter Falls Borough's in a really bad state, but you know, you won't get murdered, or raped, or anything. _She smile genially at you. _Promise._

You stare at her, not sure if she's joking or not.

_Please?_ Her lower lip juts out into an enormous pout as she gives you puppy dog eyes.

_If you think that that's going to work on me,_ and you break out into a wide smirk, _then you're sorely mistaken._

She doesn't bother to feign affront and continues to attempt to wheedle you into coming to walk the streets with her, which is a stupid topic to argue about if you've ever heard one, and after about five minutes of her prodding your side, you start to humor her.

_Why?_ you query in a weary tone of voice, digging your heels into the soft ground in the old playground. _I like it here. We come here every day. Almost every day, I mean._

She plucks idly at the grass lazily swaying in the brisk breeze by her foot—_My point exactly._

Your eyebrows draw together to form a puzzled line atop the bridge of the nose before you sigh thickly through your nose. _You don't make any sense, Korra—you know that?_

She turns toward you, a challenge evident in her blue eyes. _And tell me, how do I not make any sense?_

_Well…_ And you flap your arms vaguely around in an attempt to gesture at the playground, _You told me that you came here every day, for a long time. Why...why don't you like the playground anymore? Are you giving this place up for the_ _so we can talk in the _streets?

Korra stares at you with wide blue eyes for a long moment, and then throws her head back and starts to laugh, a loud and brazen sound that scares a flock of twittering birds away from the nearby forest, where they chirp madly before flapping angrily into the cool air.

_Spirits, Asami,_ Korra gasps through fits of laughter, wiping tears from her eyes, _You make it sound as if I'm breaking up with this place and dumping it for the streets._

_Well—well, you are!_ you petulantly exclaim, throwing your hands up in exasperation.

_Uh, you see, you've got some flawed logic there—one, I was never_ with _this sorry playground in the first place, and two, I'm already taken, thank you very much._

Your eyebrows shoot into your hairline. _Oh?_

_Yeah, sure. Bolin._ She grins crookedly._ Huh...maybe I should bring him sometime._

_That's okay, thanks,_ you say, standing up smartly and brushing some clingy wood chips off of your clothes.

_I know!_ she exclaims happily, and on a completely unrelated note, _My life sounds like something out of a reality TV show! I broke up with a playground, I'm in a relationship with a guy and am apparently cheating on him with the streets—_

_It sounds more sad and pathetic than like a reality TV show,_ you muse, moving to stand up.

Korra immediately jumps up after you, her eyes shining brightly in the glow of the afternoon sun. _That's besides the point._ _So, shall we go?_

_Hmph. _Your mouth quirks. _Fine._

.

(**tbc**)


	3. Stars

**author's note** | rating updated to **t** for gun violence and korra...completely losing her head at one point :p

multiple points of view in this one. akua's are told in third person, past tense; korra's third person, present tense; and asami's second person, present tense, as it normally is. i tried to make it so that it was obvious who's "narrating" and whether the section is talking about a past event or not.

* * *

**Chasing Serendipity**

The chronicles of a restless heiress—an odd boy—and a girl who has a strange obsession with eternity. / Modern AU. Korrasami friendship.

* * *

**arc three/** stars

.

.

/lies like lullabies

falling past tarnished lips/

.

(**xiii.** touch)

.

Akua and Akna had always been very close, even for identical twins. Whether they were crouched by the docks of Republic City and playing in the water, or roughhousing happily in the streets, one was never found without the other. Rambunctious and extremely loud, the two of them were quite a handful.

The task often fell to their elder sister to take care of them and make sure they didn't do anything stupid or something that would aggravate the neighbors too much, for Aana had work to do around the higher ends of the city as a washerwoman and Ata was always on the fishing boats; as such, Korra often spent her time taking care of the twins. The taxing job that had been bestowed upon her included, among other physical activities, dashing up and down the streets of the Otter Falls Borough, searching for her younger siblings while they crouched in some abandoned alleyway, all bright smiles and soft trains of giggles.

_You two,_ she grumbled after the twins' last escapee sent her scrambling through two main streets and a junkyard, _are going to be the death of me one day._

Akna only laughed and tugged against her sister's small but tight grip before proclaiming, _That's because our skills at hiding from you are so good!_

_That's hardly the point,_ Korra sighed tiredly, worrying her eyes with the back of a hand while Akua and Akna pranced around her legs, _You could get killed out there._

And at this Akua protested with a fresh, total innocence surrounding his words, _But we won't get killed!_

His twin agreed feverishly with him—_Yeah, Korra. Promise. _Akna smiled a wide, toothy smile at the older girl, bright blue eyes wide and clear.

Akua cocked his head, staring up to look at Korra's expression before sticking a pudgy finger into her face—_Hey, Korra, did someone hit you under the eyes?_

_Hmm?_ She sounded quite surprised, staring down at him quizzically. _No—no one did, why do you ask?_

Akna's eyebrows furrowed together into a disbelieving pout. _But you have bruises underneath them._

_Do I?_ she lightly asked, whisking the twins down another bend before she offered them a wide smile: _Well, I'm fine. Don't worry about it,_ she added, almost as an afterthought, _don't you worry._

_But you have _boo-boos, Akna stated baldly.

Korra only laughed openly and loudly, breaking out into a brilliant white grin—a really big and genuine smile, not the _fake_ one Akua always saw her giving to the vendors out in the street who all but rob them of their hard-earned yuans for sustenance—and he felt a rush of intense satisfaction, terribly happy to be on the receiving end of one of her bright smiles.

Korra then ushered them into the flat—_Don't worry about me,_ she said softly, _You should worry about yourselves more often._ She unceremoniously deposited Akua and Akna onto two rickety stools before crossing over to the half-broken cabinet to fill two cups with cold water, the one resource they have that never seems to be exhausted.

_Hmph!_ Akna pouted even as Korra banged around the kitchen, squirming in her seat while Akua silently giggled behind his twin's back, _You worry about me enough for all of us!_

Korra placed the two tin cups of water down, and leaned over Akua to ruffle Akna's messy dark hair—_And that's because I care about you, kid._

_Too much,_ Akua offered.

He watched as Korra looked down to give him a shadowed half-smile. _No, not too much,_ she said slowly, her eyes the precise shade of blue as Akua's,_ I'll never care about you two too much. If anything—always too little._ Then she stood up, told Akna and Akua not to destroy the house while she went out to get some sandwiches, and left the flat.

And these were the times that Akua had wished would never end. Just him and Akna and Korra. Together, as one big family.

Unfortunately, fate is never that kind.

.

(**xiii.** bias)

.

The Otter Falls Borough is about as decrepit as you expected it to be, if not even more so.

Threadbare clothes, tattered and patched, hang limply from fraying clotheslines strung up on large poles, flapping wetly in the small breeze that's doing absolutely nothing to help dry the garments. There are a few old men with skin like folded leather puffing on a shared, old and chipped pipe, some kind of thick white smoke lazily drifting up from its bowl—it's a smoke that stings your nose with its acrid, strangely _salty_ stench and sends you into a small fit of coughing when Korra marches you past them. You can feel their sunken eyes honed in on your back even as you self-consciously pass by them, distinctly aware how very extravagant your neatly pressed casual wear clothes are compared to the shabby rags that lay around their bony shoulders.

One of them calls out to Korra—_Ei, Korra, qa Kapkaanam Ya'allua! Apqar-elen cuqli da arnaq. Nasquq-n—et, kina una?_

Korra says something sharply back to them in the Winter Tongue before dragging you off.

_What were they saying?_ you quietly ask the blue-eyed girl with a slight hint of trepidation evident in your tone.

_Oh, nothing important._ Korra waves a dismissive hand. _They basically just told me it's November—too cold for me to be out in these clothes._ She plucks impatiently at her ratty gray shirt. _And they asked who you were._ She catches sight of your scandalized expression and smirks widely, but she doesn't tell you what she said—instead grabbing your arm and pulling you through the streets once more.

_So, why are we here, again?_ you ask, not able to help staring at the squalor around you.

_Well,_ Korra says, whipping you around another turn, _we were _going_ to talk, but I just remembered—Bolin's stopping by today. Oh, and Mako, too—_

_What?!_ you exclaim loudly, a bolt of surprise racing through your body even as you tear your hand from Korra's grasp.

Korra slows down behind you, her bright blue eyes now questioning. _Uh...what's wrong with Mako? I mean, look, I _know_ that he can be a whack job and really, really prissy sometimes, but he isn't that—_

You wring your hands, scrambling to find the right words and really not quite sure why you're reacting so badly to this little bit of information—_I—he's—_ you splutter, and then cave in and mutter, _He's my ex-boyfriend—_

_Really?!_ Korra's eyes look like they're about to pop out of their sockets before she sobers down—_Hmm._ She starts to walk you through the streets once more.

_Besides,_ you splutter, _wasn't he—hasn't he been in a juvenile delinquent center?_

_Sweetie,_ and Korra says this in a mocking voice that practically drips with satire with the tiniest bit of a sneer painted across her face, _if you're so disturbed by that concept, then what are you doing walking through one of the poorest slums in the Four Nations with me? The whole police system in this city is _really_ fucked-up, in case you haven't noticed._

You glance at her shadowed face. _...Yeah?_

Korra begins to rattle off a list, tapping at her fingers—_Police brutality. Racial profiling. Bribery. Unwarranted break-ins..._ She sighs heavily at the last one, rounding another corner with chipped bricks and stagnant water pooling at the base of the wall before stopping to point at the evidently-abandoned flat in front of the two of you.

It's one of the worse-looking shelters in the borough, with a crushed, half-broken door made of wood that has long since rotted from years of exposure to the elements. Large chunks of wall have been taken off from the front side of the home; stone litters the ground near the base of the structure.

Korra stares blankly at the home—_My best friends when I was little used to live here...Katara. Sokka. _She shivers. _And..._ Gesturing sadly at the wrecked house in front of the two of you—_Then they moved to New Ba Sing Se, last I heard. I haven't seen them nor heard from them in years—_

_KOOORRAAAA!_

Korra's facial expression turns from melancholy to shocked to panicked and slightly amused, almost like a set of broken traffic lights as something large and green comes exploding out of nowhere. And you scramble back as fast as you can, tripping out of the way as the stocky boy comes barreling out of the flat across from the one you and Korra are standing in front of before he very literally tackles the blue-eyed girl with a hug:

_Hey, you're back! You're finally back! Wow, _and the boy draws this word out somewhat mindlessly, _I was getting worried, you know, the sun passed the midday mark already..._

A muffled voice comes from somewhere underneath this boy: _And how in La's name can you even _tell_ that the sun's passed its zenith?_

_Well, you know, the thing about the sun is that it makes a big loop through the sky—_

_—Yes, I do know; now let go of me, I still need to breathe—_

_—Oh! All right. Sorry. Yeah, I'll go and do that n—oof!_

And Korra pushes the stocky green-eyed boy off of her before seizing your arm and dragging you in front of her: _Oh, and Asami, this is Bolin._

Bolin sits up, rubbing the back of his neck and observing you with large, good-natured green eyes that spark with recognition as they skid across your facial features: _Oh, wow!_ he exclaims excitedly, _I know you! You're Mako's ex-girlfriend!_

Before you can explain to him that you really don't want to be referred to as "Mako's ex-girlfriend", he wraps a muscular arm around your shoulders and grins widely at Korra. _So, are we taking her with us?_

Your eyebrows shoot into your hairline as the blue-eyed girl smiles maniacally. _'Course!_ Then she assures you—_Don't worry, 'Sami, it'll be fun. It's going to be like a once in a lifetime experience!_ She smiles brightly.

You incoherently splutter around your tongue before you can find your words—_What are you doing, trying to _kidnap _me?! I thought that you just said we were talking—?_

_Well, we _are _talking right now. And no, we're not kidnapping you,_ Korra says in a very unconvincing tone of voice. _Calm down, it'll be fun, I promise you._ She tilts her head. _Tell me, have you ever been to a street fight?_

You stare at her in flat disbelief:

_What._

.

(**ix.** temptation)

.

The nice man with amber eyes started coming to Akua and Akna one day and offered them sweets.

Korra had taken both of them to the grocery sector of the city and was vociferously haggling with a street vendor over the cost of some greens, while Akua and Akna loitered some ways away from their elder sister, not the least bit interested in grocery shopping, when a heavy hand fell on Akna's shoulder.

Akna loudly squealed, struggling to extricate herself from the clamp of the meaty paw, while Akua whirled around in horror only to face a man with a lined, sun-beaten face smiling amiably down at them from underneath a dark brown, wide-brimmed fedora—_You want to buy some candy, kids?_

He removed his hand from Akna's shoulder, who immediately stepped back into her twin, her face scrunched up into an expression of extreme annoyance before she pouted, _We don't have money._

_First packet's free of charge,_ he instantly told them, thrusting a torn cloth bag that seemed as if it had been partially ravaged by a saber tooth moose lion into the twins' faces.

Akna hesitated, her eyes flickering from the man's hand to his weathered face to the cloth bag and moved to step away. But Akua only saw her take a few steps towards Korra's general direction and then forgot about it as he gleefully eyed the sugary bounty in front of him—he reached into the bag and withdrew a brightly-colored red packet—_I've never seen this before!_ he cried eagerly. _What is it?_

_They're new,_ the man told them. _They're called Skittles._ He started to tip some into Akua's outstretched hands before a hand close around the scruff of his neck and someone was yanking him away from the candy. Crying out in surprise and annoyance, he twisted futilely in his detainer's grip even as she pulled him even further back behind her, where he stumbled straight into Akna.

_We don't want any, Yakuza, thank you very much,_ Korra's voice icily said from somewhere far away before she began to herd Akua and Akna away from the man.

_What was that all about?_ Akua complained, hanging from Korra's unoccupied arm, as the other was loaded with groceries.

Korra threw him such a disparaging look before marching onwards that Akua reeled back immediately, his blue eyes widening into the size of saucers. Something began to sting at his eyes, and in the background, Akna tagged miserably along behind him.

_Korra?_ Akua tentatively tugged at his older sister's elbow, biting down hard on his lower lip, his throat clenching slightly as she continued to refuse to meet his gaze, _Korra?_

But she didn't respond to his harried inquiries, only taking longer and faster strides so that Akua and Akna had to jog to keep up with her until they reached their decrepit flat. Korra flung open the door with much more force than necessary, her back ramrod straight and practically quivering with bottled-up fury as she silently waited for Akua and Akna to careen past her and into the main room before she closed the door, let the groceries drop on the floor, and slammed the heel of her hand onto the wooden table—_What in the name of Yue were you _doing_ back there?_ she tightly snarled, her expression screwed up into one that Akua would have expected to see on a raging tigerdillo rather than his older sister.

_I was,_ Akua weakly stuttered, the burning in his eyes intensifying and his vision growing quite blurry, _I was just—_

_Have I not taught you anything?! _Korra raged, her jawline twitching and her right fist clenching so tightly that Akua could see the stark white outline of her knuckles against dark mocha skin. _Do you have _any_ idea what "common sense" means, Akua?_

_I—I didn't mean—_

_You didn't mean to do what, now? You would have taken that stupid package of candy without any regards to your personal safety whatsoever if I hadn't stopped you! Why—what the _hell_ were you thinking back there? Spirits, Akua, you don't just take random objects from strangers on the street!_

He was really starting to cry now, his lips curling down into a wide, quivering frown even as he bowed his head and hot tears dripped onto his clasped hands, each impact of salty water onto brown skin like drops of boiling oil that ate through his flesh, one by one.

There was a rustle behind him, and Akna piped up—_But you knew him,_ she said in a small voice, no doubt scared that Korra would blow up once more, _Y-you called him a name. You called him Yakuza._

There was a moment of dead and taut silence, swinging through the room like a razor-sharp sword, that's only broken by Akua's choked sobs before Korra spoke again, and this time her voice was trembling with barely-suppressed rage—_And you, neither of you want to get involved with him in any way. I hope that you remember Katara and Sokka._

_What?_ Akna asked uncertainly. _They moved to New Ba Sing Se._

_So they did,_ Korra flatly said, and then she was pulling Akua up by his arms, roughly wiping her sleeve against the tears spilling down his cheeks. _Don't do that again, you understand?_ she lowly whispered, her breath against his ear. _Promise me._

A loud sniffle—_P-promise._

The pressure left his shoulders as Korra stood up, regarding him with a cool blue gaze—_Don't trust strangers._ Then she picked up the groceries and vanished into the adjacent kitchen.

.

(**xvi.** drive)

.

She's a liar and she's a hypocrite, and it's only with the stars that she's truthful to, because she knows that only the spirits in the sky will be able to keep her heart and keep it close and snug.

Sometimes, Korra goes outside at night and looks at those twinkling dots of light hanging above her head and out of reach, and frankly asks them what the actual fuck is wrong with herself.

(_Manipulative,_ the stars say. _But driven,_ the stars say.)

She'll feel the cool night breeze ghost its way across her skin and murmur airy sweet nothings into her ears, and she'll wonder why she even _bothers_ putting a smile on her face when the sun shines down upon the earth when it hurts her so much to do so.

Not even necessarily the physical action, but the emotional emptiness behind that wide beam.

(She wants to stop pushing through her life and slow down, slow down however much she needs to so she can make time to mourn.)

_Smile._ She used to always smile. She used to always smile a _genuine_ smile. People also always used to tell her that she had a very nice and refreshingly sweet smile. So Korra would smile at them some more because _Korra hates disappointing people._

But she's disappointed Ata. Disappointed Aana. Disappointed Akua, Akna; every single person she's touched for the past seven years.

And what's a god to those who aren't aware of its existence? What use does power bring someone who can't wield it properly, because the consequences of utilizing it are far greater than its gifts?

(No one knows about the raw pool of power available at her disposal.)

There is this doddering and half-insane voice in the back of her mind that had been planted the day Akua met the world as it truly was and then crashed and burned against it. The day his mind simply seemed to shatter and he as a person withdrew back into the recesses of his conscience and stayed inside it, hidden and tucked away in the churning sea of his own memories.

It's partly her own fault, she supposes. She had spent the better part of her life sheltering Akua and Akna from tragedies, trying to maintain their clean, pure innocence. And then, when confronted with the cruel austerity of the world Akua crumples like a tin can underneath a giant's boot and Akna leaves bloody traces of haunted whispers behind before she passes on.

She spends a lot of time doubting herself, but she's certain of a few things.

(Very few things, none of which she is proud of.)

One, that she loves her family more than anything in the world.

Two, that her heart is split up into three pieces—one to Akua, one to herself, and another to the man who doesn't even know he has a piece of her soul.

And three, that Asami Sato has no idea whatsoever that the Korra who always smiles is little more than a lying bitch.

.

(**xvii.** breathe)

.

And Akua didn't trust strangers after that day with the man and the candy.

But that didn't stop the man from coming to them.

They were at the playground that day—Akua, Akna, and Korra. Korra had wandered off into the thin ring of trees that surrounded the playground, as she always did when she brought the twins to this particular place, and said twins were fooling around on the swing set, pushing themselves up high, as high as they could go, before they would jump off and see who faceplanted into the soft grass below and who stood upright on their feet.

Today, Akua was taking more spills than he normally did and Akna was delighting in reminding him of this fact.

Akua grumbled. _I usually win,_ he complained to her triumphant face after the third time he peeled his face away from grass.

_But I won this time!_ She basked in the glow of her victory, grinning widely down at him.

The smile is short-lived.

_Why, hello there, little boy,_ someone breathed from behind Akua's back, and he lets out a terrified squeak, stumbling around to stare at a familiar man with amber eyes—amber eyes that glitter with cruel intent.

Akua stumbled back from the man, Yakuza, his hands instinctively reaching for Akna's. _Wha—?_

_Would you still like some candy?_ Yakuza offered in a honeyed, sickeningly sweet tone of voice.

_St-stay away,_ and Akua tried to keep his voice from trembling, but it came out as a terrified squeak, _K-Korra told us—you're a bad man—_

_Ah, but Korra isn't here right now,_ and Yakuza's mouth twisted into a gruesome approximation of a smile as he reached into his brown jacket.

_Click._

The sound was small, but it ripped through the air like a cannon blast as Akna sucked in a sharp gasp of horror at a gun being pointed towards her face.

_You Water Tribe scamps have to understand,_ he hissed, his lips still stretched into a smile, _there's no place for you in this world anymore. Least of all your sister. Korra, that's her name, isn't it?_

_Wh-what?_ Akua squeaked, his wide blue eyes still fixated onto the gun.

_Oh, I see. She hasn't told you yet,_ and Yakuza cackled madly, the firearm shaking wildly in his white-knuckled grip, _no matter, no matter. I'll deal with her later._

Akna gasped—_What do you mean, you'll "deal with—"_

—a bang—

—a whiplash of gleaming silver flashing momentarily through the air—

—a piercing scream—

—crimson droplets falling from the sky like fat and glistening rubies—

_Akua? Akna?!_

Korra's words came tearing out of the woods a moment before their owner did, barreling straight through the trees before the blue-eyed girl staggered to a heart-shattering halt before a pool of crimson blood slowly leeching into the springy grass.

Her screams reverberated through the air:

—_You fucking son of a bitch_—

Akua could only stare after his elder sister, spewing a mad fountain of insults and swear words in her anger and panic while she descended upon a retreating Yakuza, in a foggy daze—

_—what are you—_

—Akna's life spilling out of her twitching body in the form of burning red liquid—

_—a conceited and foul _pig_—_

—but only when the hot blood hit Akua's hands did he lash out at nothing and sob and scream into the still air for help—

_—don't deserve to live—_

—he screamed until his throat seized close—

—_fucking mad—_

—screamed in desperation—

_—chauvinistic—_

—screamed in pain—

_—little—_

—no one came—

_—shit—_

—and he grabbed Akna, chalk-white from blood loss, by her collar and dragged her limp form into his tight embrace.

There were a few faint shouts coming from behind him—the sound of rushing flames, earth cracking against stone, a loud squeal of pain and a bang, and quite a few more dirty swear words—but he paid the sounds no heed; only when Korra came scrambling into view had he spared a glance back.

But Akna was suddenly so heavy in his arms. So heavy, like a ton of stone weighing his arms down. The rush of his thoughts were overcome with lethargy and the poison of fear, spilling into his mind and turning his hands and feet into molten lead.

And yet, he held her to him as close as he possibly could—

—_Akua,_ Akna suddenly gasps, his chest shuddering and his pastel blue eyes turning even paler, _Akua—Korra—don't leave me here—_

_I won't leave you,_ he shakily whispers in his ear, and he heard the rushing sound of great breaths being sucked in and then blown out behind him, undoubtedly sounds from Korra, and his remark was supposed to sound reassuring but it came out as a grim promise, as if the mere conviction behind his words could drive away the force bringing on Akna's demise, _I won't. I won't let you—won't let you go, I promise—_

_—I...I can't lift my head—_

He bit back another moan and slowly propped her up against him—_Then...then just use your eyes._

Her lashes fluttered like feathers against her bloody cheeks.

The city stretches out in front of them, swathes of blinking golden lights set against a black backdrop; a swaying ocean of midnight blue. The mountains loomed in the distance beyond the twinkling stars, the dark shadows of the landforms shrouded in rolling mist. They could see the clouds, feel the wind on their skin, and the hands of the night of a thousand stars held them taut—darkness and light—willing them home.

—..._I can see it, Akua—_

He half-whispered, half-cried_—It's all so beautiful from this place—_

She sighed_—It is_—and her breath was so shallow that he had to strain to hear her words.

Blood dripped from her fingertips, falling into the snow like soft rain. Red bloomed across the white ice, the song of the wind swooping around them in a fluttering embrace.

_I don't want to die,_ Akna whispered suddenly, still gazing through half-lidded eyes at the beauty of the city, but even as she said this her eyes were fluttering shut.

Akua shook his head frantically, willing so badly for the darkness to be gone, and suddenly Korra was right next to him instead of behind him, her blue eyes strangely luminous in the red glow of the dying sun, the light reflecting unshed tears.

And despite himself, Akua gasped in shock as he stared her hand—no, at the _fire_ in her hand, in Korra's hand—_Korra's a _waterbender, he wildly thinks—_Korra?_ he gasped.

She stared at him wordlessly over the stubborn, warm light of the flames, a flame that she must have kept hidden from everyone in the world for all her life, even _him_, even _Akna,_ even her _family_.

_Akua,_ Akna whispered.

Her eyes were fixed onto his, and he whispered in a tiny voice, _It's okay, it's okay—_he was not even sure if he'd convinced himself—_Akna, you'll be okay..._

Her quaking lips part, washed-out blue eyes reflecting the weakly dancing flames Korra nurtured in her palm—_Akua—A-Akua, I don't want to die—_

_—No!—_and he cried into her mind, forgetting Korra, forgetting his surroundings—only remembering a bitter, broken-glass grief, cutting his insides into throbbing shreds and sending his emotions careening over the edge—_No, Akna, please don't—don't say your goodbyes to me—_

She reached up with trembling fingers; then, grazing his face with her bony digits and painting a bloody stroke onto his freezing cheek_—I love you, Akua._

And Akna smiled dimly at him, the bleeding land of snow rushing away beneath her, a final gale of wind drifting away into blessed silence.

A cry welled up inside him and spills over his limits, a wavering scream of grief echoed by the swaying forest behind him. He rocked back and forth; sobs, cheeks wet with tears—unable at the end to even find words. Inarticulate, amorphous sounds bubbled past his lips; a howling and threadbare wall until his throat can take no more.

_No—no, wait,_ he shouted hoarsely. _No, Akna—WAIT—_

But she didn't _wait_.

There was a pair of nameless arms around his torso; strong arms, comforting arms, _familiar_ arms, but not the arms he wanted—

_—Akna—_

Agonizing minutes crept by.

His hand rested on her chest.

She continued to bleed.

_—spirits, Akna, stay with me,_ and he begged with the coldly distant stars, face bared to the raw elements, _please, stay with me—_

He started to wriggle, desperate to escape the arms folded around him like a _prison_—

—Her pale lips were smeared with a pomegranate-juice red.

Something vital beneath his hand ceased to beat.

_—No, I'm sorry, Akna—_

_Akua,_ and the quiet, terribly measured voice came from above him, _Akua, she's gone...you can't do anything—_

He cried out in anger and sorrow, twisting around for the briefest moment to glare at his elder sister—_How can you even _say_ that with a straight face?_

Korra instantly let go of him as if he had burned her, her expression morphing into one of confusion and hurt, but he didn't care—he was so _mad_ at Korra, angrier than he'd ever been in his entire life—he hated that stinging remark she had uttered—he _couldn't_ not be able to do anything, he just couldn't—

Akna died in his arms.

_So—_

Blood still drizzled from her fingers, weeping tears of crimson droplets into the frozen ground, cold and empty.

—_sorry—_

Her life laid severed, red flowers blooming in the alabaster snow.

His heart besides it, torn open and bleeding for the whole world to see.

* * *

**end notes** | _whoops_ i overdid "breathe" ._.

this is going to be expanded to four chapters. i know that all the plotlines seem to be dragging in weird directions but i've planned it so that it'll all come together :)


	4. Creations

**author's note** | uggh, i'm so sorry for the long wait. literally drafted this five times and scrapped them all again ;_; it's not an excuse, but you know...a girl can try. :p

many hugs and virtual oxygen cookies for all of you.

* * *

**Chasing Serendipity**

The chronicles of a restless heiress—an odd boy—and a girl who has a strange obsession with eternity. / _korrasami friendship_ — _au modern-era_

* * *

**arc four/** creations

.

.

/night hides the world

but reveals a universe/

.

(**xviii.** victory)

.

You hadn't been really sure how you expected the whole underground street fighting business to work out—some low-key, disorganized event, perhaps.

Definitely not a cleaned out space in an underground bunker with locker rooms (granted, they were primitive and earthen and in desperate need of cleaning), a judge's podium, and stone stands.

And you had _definitely_ not anticipated the end result of this endeavor, however mad, either.

Mako had arrived (and had done a double take upon seeing you) sometime during Bolin's explanations of the rules: apparently, two combatants—bender or non-bender—would face off in a seventy-meter-wide dirt ring, and they weren't permitted to step outside the boundaries of that area. The first combatant whose back touches the ground loses—

—_And best of all, there's money involved!_ Bolin had brightly exclaimed, _If you win your first match, you get a hundred yuans. And then if you win two matches consecutively, you get two hundred—and then four hundred, eight hundred, et cetera, et cetera. But if you lose, you get nothing._ He grins brightly at you, eyes sparkling in excitement. _It's so much fun to watch; you'll love it!_

You weren't as convinced as Bolin of the "sheer awesomeness" of this whole street fighting business—it was fucking illegal, for Agni's sake—but you reluctantly agreed anyway, for you had told your father you would be out the whole day.

For obvious reasons, you tried to stay as far away as humanly possible from Mako, although that wasn't working out very well, because he seemed to want to get as close as humanly possible to you, so it was practically like the two of you are playing some very weird, convoluted game of tag with each other.

_What are the two of you _doing? Korra had asked suddenly, falling back to trot in between you and Mako, while Bolin sauntered ahead, happily taking the lead.

_We're playing tag,_ you said dully, sidestepping to Korra's back.

Her lips quirked up into an amused smile, and she glided away from the two of you, with the passing remark of _Have fun, then..._

That was three hours ago.

Fast forward three hours later, you had seen Korra and the "Bending Brothers," as Mako and Bolin were referred to, sock their opponents in four consecutive games with combatants twice their size and return with a bulging sack of grimy paper yuans that were no doubt questionably acquired by the administrator of these street fights—not that you honestly cared either way.

Mako and Bolin had left after the fight after Korra had divvied out their portion of the winnings, quoting something about Mako needing to return to the power plant to work his shift, and you were left with Korra, who was cackling over her yuans like some money-hungry mongrel.

And that's when everything spirals out of control.

_Going somewhere, Korra?_ the low, malevolent voice breathes from the shadows.

Korra's fingers instinctively tighten around the money bag and you can see her spine stiffen, slipping up ramrod-straight like she's got a broomstick for a back.

And when you turn, you can see an emotion in Korra's eyes, an emotion that you've almost never seen on her face before—because it's usually splattered with a bright smile and a good helping of confidence to boot.

But now? You only see naked fear and rage in her gaze, spreading across her features like a wildfire, narrowing her bright cobalt eyes into little more than slits and twisting her pretty face into a savage snarl—

_You._

.

(**xix.** defeat)

.

Your fingers tighten around Korra's arm as the tall, scarred man steps into view, a sly smirk playing across his pale lips while his amber eyes glitter in the glow of the spluttering, naked white lights overhead.

_Hello, Korra. Long time no see._ And for whatever reason, he gestures violently at the long and jagged white scar that mars his right cheek.

You watch as Korra's fists clench at her side. Her lips press tightly together. You can almost feel hate emanating from her in thick, black waves; a dark radiance that burned as hot as the summer sun. Blue eyes, shadowed beneath thick brown bangs, are growing terribly dark with resolute intent—

—_You,_ she says, her toneless voice colder than the snow she stands in.

Your eyes widen as the man laughs loudly, clapping his hands together. _I see that you have brought your little friend along with you, now haven't we, Korra?_

Korra spits at his feet. _I didn't bring her here for you,_ she says in a very nasty tone of voice.

The man only smiles indulgently before he turns to you and bends over in a short bow. _Allow me to introduce myself—I am Yakuza._

_Yakuza,_ you faintly repeat.

_Cut the bullshit,_ Korra snaps. _Why are you here, and what do you want? I hope you remember what I told you—_

_Yes,_ Yakuza calmly interrupts, his thin hands fisted in the pockets of his thick gray overcoat, _yes, Korra, I do remember. How could I ever—forget?_ His eyes widen maliciously after he enunciates the final world, emphasizing both of its syllables. _Oh...but perhaps I shouldn't call you Korra..._

_That's the first true thing you've ever said to my face,_ Korra stonily replies, her hand twitching.

Yakuza's smile broadens. _...Avatar._

_What?_ you dumbly say.

Korra's eyes flare dangerously at this word, a word that is meant to be honorific but coming out of Yakuza's mouth only sounds like a taunting insult—_You haven't told anyone,_ she murmurs through clenched teeth, her blue eyes flicking towards you momentarily.

_That I have not,_ Yakuza agrees genially, _although I'm sure that the Order of the White Lotus would love to have you under their control._ He lewdly leers at her impassive expression. _But tell me, Korra, why _wouldn't_ you reveal yourself as the Avatar? What do you have to gain from hiding in the shadows? You could be sitting in the lap of luxury rather than dicking around in the slums of Republic City. You could be playing the Fire Lord under your thumb. You could be, I don't know, settling peace talks in the Earth Kingdom, you could have all the fame and fortune in the world—yet, you are still _here._ That intrigues me._

She frowns ferociously at his words, each tensed muscle of her body screaming in disapproval. _Oh? Well, you tell me, Yakuza, what kind of person leaves their family to rot in squalor while they "play with the Fire Lord under their thumb"?_

The man's eyes narrow dangerously. _What kind of person holds the world's safety in their hands and then shatters it carelessly against the ground?_

_Korra?_ You shake her arm. _What's he talking about? What safety?_

Korra's hand twitches. And she says, _As far as I know, none of the other Avatars have ever stayed with their family._

_Ah. So family matters the most to you in the world, doesn't it? More than another's trust, more than—money?_

_Why are we talking about this?_ Korra only snarls savagely, and you can tell that she's close to losing her temper. She takes another purposeful step towards the lanky amber-eyed man. _You already know all of this._

Yakuza only scoffs at the scene, his cold amber gaze meeting Korra's angered one—_I don't think you understand, girl, that money, money and power, are the most important things in the world. They can buy you fame, buy you friends—it can buy you _everything._ I suppose you wish you had access to all that fortune for—say, your family, now don't you? _

Korra didn't say anything.

_That being said, and putting aside your incapability to fulfill your role—you and _your kind_ don't belong here, Avatar or not,_ Yakuza viciously says. _And many agree with my sentiment. You saw how easy it was for me to take away that little girl's spirit, now didn't you?_

You still have no idea what the hell Yakuza is going on about, but Korra's voice has turned horribly, horribly flat. And it contains an emotion that you had never associated with Korra before. It contains fear, fear and sorrow—_No one was there, but me and Akua._ Then she jumps back into you, her quivering form in the circle of your arms—_And you—you leave him out of this._

_You lie to yourself,_ Yakuza hisses. _You see, you fool, when you remain in one of the poorest, one of the meanest slums in the world, all you that possess_, I_ allow you to have. All you are, _I _allow you to be. And that which you desire most is mine to give and take as I will. Think on this now, and in all the dark hours between this moment and the day your sister rots in a forgotten grave, know that each one of them is an hour that I _allow_ you to have. And I have to power to take everything you have left. Do you understand me?_—everything._ And I will _hurt_ it first._

Then this man, this Yakuza, he steps back and points a stiff finger at Korra—_You watch your back, Avatar. I haven't forgotten your words. But neither should you._

The sounds of his retreating footsteps fade into the distance.

From besides you, Korra speaks—_I have to go._

You glance at her in surprise—her tone is jaded; her voice fractured and upset. And you can't help but ask—_Korra? Are you...?_ And then you stop yourself, because it's completely redundant to ask if Korra's alright when she's clearly on the verge of tears.

_Asami, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry—

You don't know why Yakuza's words have affected her so much. But you know it isn't your place to ask.

—_please, I have to go_—_it isn't—Akna—_

You blink. _Akna?_

Looking very much like a deer caught in headlights—_N-no..._ She turns away, shoulders hunched up practically to her ears, _Asami..._

Then she turns away and whispers, _Don't follow me._

And you blink as if waking from a blind stupor—you nod numbly, a completely mechanized movement—and then you watch her leave.

.

(**xx.** history)

.

Korra inches open the door to her family's flat, poking her head into the space inside before easing herself fully in.

The sharp sunlight from outside filters into the dusty air, casting beams of yellow-white light into her living quarters and pooling on the dirty ground in an ever-shifting lake of gold.

Yet, she does not feel the warmth the sunlight exudes. Doesn't feel the soft breeze spraying sharp grit onto her cheeks, doesn't feel the worn frame of the door her right hand is currently clutching as if it's a lifeline.

She's absolutely numb.

Completely closed off to the world. There's nothing firing chaotically through her mind; no tears spilling down her cheeks. She can _see_ her hands, which have been perpetually trembling ever since she encountered Yakuza, but it's as if she's viewing it from far away, a spectator standing ten thousand miles away. She can't stop her fingers from twitching, she can't feel them. She can _see_ her muscles tensed, stretched taut underneath her skin, but she can't loosen them. And in this moment, all Korra feels like is a walking and talking, yet mindless robot.

Shuffling through the flat, she pushes open the door to Akua's room, finding her younger brother sitting hunched over on his thin mattress, his skinny arms tightly hugging his torso.

Then she stops—looks at him; doesn't move.

Doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know what to do.

_Korra?_

His voice is coming from a million miles away, struggling to tread through the gaping chasm in between him and Korra, and all the blue-eyed girl can do is quirk an eyebrow as a reply.

_Korra?_ he asks again, and this time she thinks she can detect a strong undercurrent of worry in his voice—_but,_ and the vague thought trails languidly through her mind, _what is worry?_

She doesn't have time to ponder over this, because suddenly there are a pair of warm arms circled around her torso.

Yet she stands there, completely still, mute and stiff as a statue. Akua may as well have been hugging a dead tree.

_Korra,_ Akua whispers, and his voice is wavering dangerously, his lower lip quivering, _Korra, please answer me. You—you're starting to worry me._

_I'm the Avatar,_ Korra dully says, and has no idea why she has chosen to say _this_ out of all the things she could have uttered—and she sees a reflection of her own inner confusion ghost over Akua's pale blue irises.

_...I know that, Korra._

_I'm useless,_ she says, her voice seeping into the cracks in the walls while simultaneously feeling detached and floating somewhere far away.

_What?_ Akua sounds absolutely appalled. _Korra—Korra, you're not useless._

_What's the point, anyway,_ she murmurs, and her words are not framed in a question but that of the dead husk of a statement, empty and hollow. _The world doesn't need an Avatar anymore._

Akua knits his eyebrows. _Korra—_

She shakes her head slowly, the movement practically dripping with disenchantment and defeat. _Go to sleep, Akua._

_But—_

_Go to sleep._

He studies her with concern. _Korra, what's wrong?_

She chews pensively on her lower lip. Tears her sleeve away from Akua's tight grasp and stares at the decrepit flat in front of her.

_Everything,_ she says, before taking a few steps away from her brother.

She doesn't want to see the expression on his face.

_I'm going out for a while,_ she says.

Because Korra can't bring herself to stay home a moment longer, she immediately trudges out of the flat thereafter, leaving Akua standing at the doorway to his room before she aimlessly wanders out of their home and begins to amble around the city without any sense of direction whatsoever.

_Everything,_ she intones to herself, her voice flat and indistinct, _everything's wrong..._

Blind grief and fury hit her then, blazing away through her mind, forcing her hands to curl into trembling fists by her side. She needs a reprieve, a _relief._ The sounds of the metropolis are pounding discomfortingly in her mind, rattling inside her skull and pushing what feels like a thousand, white-hot iron nails into her head, and it's all she can do to prevent herself from pressing her hands tightly against her ears while screwing her eyes shut and _screaming_. Because maybe, if she screams, she'll be able to let out all her worries and demons and ghosts in a slew of white noise. Maybe if she screams, she'll scream so loudly that _someone_ will hear her, _someone_ will offer her a needed reprieve from the happenstances of this world. Someone will give her the universal remote that controls the earth. She wishes for a giant pause button she can hit, something that would stop the earth from spinning and sun from rising just so she could take a moment to catch her breath and absorb what had exactly _happened_ seven years ago with Yakuza and Akna—

—_where in the world did I go wrong?_—

—and just...stop _running._

Running from her problems. Running from Akua. Running from Ata and Aana. Running from the title of Avatar. Running from Asami. Running from the sky, the ocean, the sun and the stars.

Running from infinity. From the inevitable.

Just hit the stop switch, because she doesn't have the strength nor the will to slow down while the world is still on the play button.

But there is no such stop button. There is no such power.

_If you want to stop running,_ something inside her whispers, _you will have to be the one to stop yourself._

And Korra ignores the voice, and with her feet slapping noiselessly against the cobbles on the ground—

—she _runs._

Runs down the streets, runs past clotheslines, runs past potholes and hovels. Shoes kicking up droplets of cloudy water, muddy flecks of grime and dirt.

Doesn't pull at her hair, clutch at her head. Doesn't screw her eyes shut, doesn't scream.

Instead, she staggers blindly through her home streets and pushes out of the boundaries of the city that never sleeps.

Even then, it takes her several minutes tromping through the trail that led to the abandoned playground to have the noise completely fade from her ears, yet the sounds still leave a sticky, lingering afterimage in her head, clinging onto her thoughts like irritating cobwebs that simply refuse to fall away.

Korra stumbles into the decrepit playground and all but collapses onto one of the old black swings hanging limply from its dusty wooden supports. Its rusty chains grumble in annoyance as she settles down on the thin plastic strip, and she curls her shivering fingers around its corroded cables as if to gain some sense of stability.

She would be perfectly content to stay in this position for the rest of the day—a hunched over posture, head buried in her hands while she wallows around in self-pity and hopelessness, with nothing but the hollow embrace of the wind for comfort, but before long she hears the soft tread of footsteps thumping against the ground growing louder by the moment.

_Korra,_ an unfamiliar voice (although she does pick up that its timbre is very tired and very male) quietly says, and she doesn't even bother to grant this mystery man a short glance.

Talking to her hands, she manages to grind out, _Whoever you are, just...leave me alone._

The footsteps stop, and Korra grudgingly glares up, staring into a pair of old, sunken gray eyes. Snowy white tufts of hair sprout around his ears, ringing the back of his head but leaving the top completely bald. The man's skin is like wrinkled leather, stretched with age, his hands pockmarked with liver spots.

_Korra,_ he says again. _I would like to talk with you._

_How do you know my name?_ she bluntly asks, turning her head back down before it falls heavily back into her hands. _What do you want from me? Who are you?_

_One question at a time,_ he dryly chuckles.

Korra merely grunts.

_My name,_ the old man quietly says, _is Aeton. I am the leader of the White Lotus._

Her eyes widen imperceptibly, and she automatically jumps off the swing, taking a step back. _White Lotus?_ Her stature hardening, _I'm not going anywhere with you._

_I did not come here to ask you of that,_ he responds calmly yet quickly.

Head tipped to one side in a gesture of confusion, she frowns, _Then why are you here?_

_...Yakuza._

At his name, darkness descends upon her expression like a raging storm, narrowing her eyes into slits and twisting her mouth into a savage snarl—_Don't you _dare_ mention his name around me,_ she spits out through gritted teeth. _No, wait—how do you even know him?_

The sound of the wind whooshing through the forest behind rips through the air like a gunshot.

_You see, Korra,_ this man, this Aeton murmurs. _Yakuza didn't work on his own._

Her pupils dilate. _What—what is it that you are trying to tell me?_

Aeton chuckles mirthlessly, his old body shaking erratically with laughter. _I think that you are smart enough to figure that out by yourself, Korra._

The White Lotus leader turns, eyeing a horrified and appalled Korra with an unfocused set of eyes—_I apologize, Avatar Korra, I really do...but Yakuza's employment was necessary for your...expiration._

_...Expiration,_ and the word comes tumbling out past her lips in a whisper before she can stop it.

Her breaths are coming out in random bursts now, erratic and sharp. The same as her thoughts, racing wildly through her mind.

_This man employed Yakuza to kill me,_ her mental voice whispers.

_He wanted to kill me._

_The fucking White Lotus wanted to kill me._

_Why are you telling me this now?_ she whispers, blue eyes wide and haunted as she staggers back from the full brunt of the revelation hitting her.

Shaking his head—_You're a smart girl, aren't you, Korra?_

He doesn't say anything after that, only stares at her with an unidentifiable expression—but is that _sadness?_—in his pale gray eyes.

Everything had been moving so slowly for her, as if she had been drenched in tar and was now struggling to move against an incoming, sticky black tide.

But everything has been honed into razor-sharp clarity in those few crucial seconds. Her castle of glass, still soaring up towards the sky, refracting thousands of rays of light—

—and then her glass castle, her entire world, shatters into a million pieces around her.

.

(**xxi.** change)

.

All Korra can do is stare at the old, frail man sitting hunched across from her, his watery gray gaze fixed expressionlessly onto her own.

This was the man who had wielded the sword that was Yakuza? The man who had caused all her heartbreak? This frail, pathetic thing of a human being?

Icy cobalt eyes become unfocused and stare across the gulf between now and the days when she was a little girl, before Akua and Akna had been born, when she was still living in the South Pole and small enough to ride on her father's shoulders through a sea of ice and snow (her father, whom she barely saw nowadays, and each time he comes back from the fishing boats, he's a little more weathered, a little more battered). Her little fingers wrapped in her mother's fists, laughing bright and clear as they danced in the dappled silver light of Yue (her mother, whose hands were now frail and bony; cracked and bleeding from all the manual washing of clothes she does for others).

Too long ago—the memories fade and blur into each other like something out of an old lithograph, colors muted over time until all that is left is an impression; a half-image on yellowed, curling paper.

And Korra stares at this man, this White Lotus leader, this _Aeton_, in an unblinking, nonverbal challenge, and though she says not a word, she's pretty sure that everyone can read her thoughts as if she had said them out loud.

_Look at what you have done to me,_ her piercing glare screams,_ Look at what you have done to my family. At what this wretched world allowed you to do. At what you allowed the White Lotus to do. Look at me in the eye, and are you not ashamed of yourself and your entire, despicable organization?_

When she does speak, her voice is low and calm, but she is only struggling to allow the White Lotus man to think that her words are all coming from pure hysterics; hysterics and paranoia—but deep down inside the blackest, most bleak realms of her heart, where mere ashy remnants from a fire that had been kindled inside her soul ever since the day Akna was shot whip around in a bitterly cold wind, Korra unequivocally intends for her words to make that vile man _bleed_ inside—_I wish I were anywhere but here,_ she says lowly, _I wish I were anywhere but here, in front of you. I wish you never existed._

A long pause crashes down heavily, pregnant with anger and sorrow. The methodical sound of the wind whistling through the leaves on the trees.

_Wishing for the impossible,_ Aeton says softly.

Another long pause.

_If you're going to hate me,_ he eventually continues, _at least hate me for the mistakes I could have avoided._

Korra slams the heel of her hand against the wall, her face screwing up into an expression of pure distaste—_Like tearing my family apart? Like trying to rip my _life_ into pieces?_

_You will be reincarnated,_ Aeton plaintively says, as if he is talking to a mere four-year-old.

_I will _not,Korra viciously snaps, her fingers tightening around Akua's shoulders, and her shoulders squaring together in defiance, _not me. I think that it's high time that you realize that _I_ am Korra. Just Korra. _I_ will not be _defined_ by anything else. _I _as an individual human being will not be _reincarnated_ into anyone else. If I'm going to be remembered, I don't want to be remembered as the x-th Avatar who helped resolve an issue of _dire importance_ like, I don't know, no taxation without representation; I don't want to be another _statistic.

_You are the _Avatar, Aeton says, but from the hardening of his cold gray eyes it is clear that he is starting to lose his patience, _you are the bridge between the Spirit and the Material Worlds. You are the bringer of peace and balance to the Four Nations! Yet here you are, mucking around the slums like some sort of dirty commoner—what use are you to the world in this state? The world may as well not have an Avatar at all!_ He shakes his head in disgust. _How can you be so immoral and selfish?_

_So your completely moral and unselfish solution to my problem of inactivity is _killing_ me, and then waiting sixteen years for the next Avatar in the Earth Kingdom,_ Korra says through gritted teeth.

_What would Avatar Aang say if he saw you?_

_Well,_ _Aang is a doddering and half-insane voice in the back of my head, how useful do you think he is to me? I don't think that he cares that much, although he was perfectly happy to offer his opinion on the frankly deplorable conditions during the Industrial Revolution in one-seventy-eight AG when we discussed that in a few scattered conversations. In any case, I think that the Four Nations is getting along fine without the Avatar._

Aeton's right eye appears to have acquired a violent series of tics. _The Avatar,_ he hisses, _is the most important being in the world._

_No,_ Korra says in a truly sincere tone of voice, _you're just too attached to the old ways._ She points beyond the forest of scraggly trees, beyond the swing set; towards the craggy purple mountains shrouded in silver mist and the city gleaming underneath the warm rays of the sun. And she can't see _it_ perfectly and clearly, but she knows that there are cars growling along the cobbled streets, spitting dark gray exhaust into the air; knows that there are police airships prowling through the sky to catch even the barest whiff of criminal activity. Knows that there is an influx of people surging among the metropolis's many streets, the chatter and bustle of daily activity within Republic City swelling and retreating like the great waves that pound against the shore of a beach.

For even when Korra and Aeton are locked in a stagnant standstill outside the city, a rush of life still goes on within its boundaries.

_You see that?_ Korra quietly asks, spreading her arms._ The world has progressed at a rapid pace, and without the Avatar. The Material and Spirit Worlds rarely have any contact any more. Humans and the creatures who live in our mortal realm keep to themselves...and with spirits...vice versa. The way I see it is that at the worst, the Avatar has become nothing more than a liability...at best, a figurehead with a title that has been stripped of all meaning. The world will progress and forge on with whatever decisions they feel are best, whether it be for their own nation—for others—or themselves._

She turns her back on him with finality.

_They don't need the Avatar to keep the peace...and if they start wars...humans shouldn't rely on—one person too much. And Avatar or not—I'm just _one person._ I wouldn't be able to be everywhere at once. There'll always be something going wrong in this world at any given time, and the _Avatar_ will not always be there to resolve those conflicts. And how do the people caught in those unresolved conflicts react? They'll have to solve it by themselves._

Her voice has turned impossibly soft.

_Do you get it yet, Aeton? Either way...they don't _need_ me..._

Tension, stretched taut in the air until it begs for mercy and screams in pain—

_...Don't need an Avatar._

—and mercifully, the pressure finally gives in and snaps.

Korra quickly bows her head. Bites down hard on her lower lip, glaring venomously at her feet.

She doesn't hear Aeton say anything. Only hears the swish of his clothes through the air, the soft thumping of his boots upon the soft ground as the White Lotus Leader pads away.

And even as the muted sounds of feet hitting the dirt melt away into blessed silence, a single small dot of hot, salty water pools across her tightly clasped hands.

.

(**xxii.** bonds)

.

The playground in the corner of the universe is still waiting for you—much as you have expected.

She's there, too, and somewhere in the back of your mind, a place full of whirling dark shadows that whispered inflexible truths in your ears you shut out because you didn't want to hear them, you _knew_ that she'd be there—knew that she'd be in this playground, even after what happened with Akna so many ages ago—_because_ of what happened to her.

You know that Korra's lost—she _has_ to be lost, must be torturing herself over old wounds that had never really been healed and have just been brutally ripped open once more by Yakuza. Must be wandering around somewhere in the scorching wastelands of grief like a demented half-ghost—oh, you can definitely see it. The hard, shaking lines of her shoulders, even visible from your vantage point behind the line of scraggly, unkempt trees of the forest behind the playground, tell you that much. Shaking and rocking like there's something vital that has been torn from her chest and only just starting to regrow, but once again, it's gone—_gone_ forever.

You can still remember it, Korra's last reactions to Yakuza's acidulous words, in meticulous and horrifying detail—even now, clear as day in your head—the fact that you were _there_ and did nothing about it, nothing to intervene makes it a hundred times worse. You can still practically _hear_ Korra, flat and monotonic and low—_I have to go_. Can still see wringing her hands like a madwoman, fingers trembling, twitching like a leaf in a hurricane—_Asami, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry—misery and torment, starting to pool into her pretty blue eyes and spill out into the physical realm, one by one, drop by drop—_please, I have to go._ Can still see her turning her back on you and hunching her shoulders in a meek cover of shaky defiance—_Don't follow me._ Said like she was terrified she'll fade from his grasp and disappear forever. Her words, practically vibrating with panic and anguish, still reverberate in your ears, keeping you up at night in the black form of sweat-soaked dreams, tearing your insides out and laying them bare, twitching to the nightmarishly cold air around you.

You try and reassure yourself, asking this simple question to your troubled conscience—_what the hell could I have done, anyway?_

_Nothing,_ comes the answer, a very biased answer, the one that you want to hear. One that still rings of truth. _Nothingnothingnothingnothingnothing. That was their conflict and theirs alone. You didn't even know what _happened, _Asami._

So why are you here? Why are you at this playground again, the one that lies in the furthest corner of the universe, the one that you told yourself you'd never come back to again?

And even as you struggle internally, you're watching Korra silently from the trees, over at her quivering form as a silent shadow—you watch the grief etch itself deep in every taut muscle of her body, watch it run its freezing fingers across her skin and send her into shivering, erratic spasms, and yet you're a little unsure of whether she's noticed you yet or not in the treeline.

She doesn't even start at your words, your voice, and instead says in a horrible and thick, blank voice—_Go away._

_Korra, I—_

_No! Stop it!_ She leaps up, possessed with sudden manic energy and glares at you through puffy red eyes that are still glassy and wet. _What've you come here for? What do you want with me? No—no, scratch that—why do you want to see me, even after all that? Why are you still here?_

Her last words cause you to wince:

_Why do you even _care?!

_Korra,_ you say gently, taking a step toward her even as she trips over her feet to scramble away from you, _Korra, listen to me. It's in the past. We'll only learn from our—er—mistakes._

Even though they're swollen, her eyes still flash dangerously, before she growls lowly, _Nothing was a _mistake_, Asami._ Then, in a lower voice—_I still _failed.

You hesitate before speaking up. _Well—I mean, no one got hurt—oh, come on, Korra, please—_

This is not the right thing to say and you only realize it too late.

The girl with blue eyes the color of an ocean screams bloody murder at you, fingers raking through the air like a roaring tiger's steely claws and her matted, dirty and loose hair whipping around in the snarling wind, which only contributes to her current overall look as a madwoman—_No one got hurt? You—you're telling me—no one got hurt?!_ And she jabs a trembling finger into your face, almost squashing the tip of your nose into oblivion, her livid expression twisted up into an ugly expression of undiluted rage, _Don't—you _dare_—say that to me—don't—with Akua and Akna—don't say that—in my face—Asami—Sato!_

_I didn't mean it like that,_ you levelly say, taking her firmly by the shoulders. Hard blows come down on your shoulders like lightning strikes, blows that are sure to leave some massive and mottled bruises behind, even as inarticulate, shapeless sounds come flying out past her mouth. But you tell her, _Don't kill yourself over this._

Her eyes are burning with a blue fire so hot that you're surprised it doesn't come shooting out past her lids and incinerate you into a crisp. _Don't tell me how to live my life,_ she spits.

_I lost my mother,_ you bluntly remind her. _I lost her right in front of me. I saw the firebender attack her, I—I saw her face _melting_, Korra. I know how it feels._ You hesitate before winding an arm around her erratically quaking shoulders._ I promise you._

You don't need to elaborate beyond that.

She stares at you through half-delirious, swollen red eyes.

And then she collapses, like a limp rag doll that's devoid of all life down into your arms. Presses her face into your shoulder—and lets herself cry.

.

(**xxiii.** forever)

.

You don't think you've ever seen such a sad sight in your life.

You don't push Korra off of you—you don't question her about what happened after her meeting with Yakuza. You don't bother to whisper any more empty platitudes to her anymore, like _"I'm sorry"_ or _"I understand."_ You really _are_ sorry (perhaps more sorry than you've ever felt in your life) and you really _do_ understand (you wonder for the briefest moment if your mother's looking down at you from the stars), but you also understand that there's a time and place for everything.

Silence speaks in more volumes than words ever can.

_Silence_—this is the sound that envelopes the two of you in a warm blanket, whispering soft promises in your ears—whispering of halcyon days and lying in the soft glow of a morning sun, of an unbroken stream of peace.

_Akna,_ and Korra's terrified voice rings loudly through your ears. You don't know exactly what happened to this Akna figure, you don't even know who she _is_—but you do realize that it's similar to Akua's name.

Almost suspiciously so.

And you hesitate—then you put your lips to Korra's ear even as her despair soaks into your brown jacket—_Imagine, if but for a moment, that...Akna is still with you. Imagine a world of the two of you, with no one else—just you, and just him. And remember what made you care. Remember what you loved about him—_

Korra jumps beneath your arms, and she corrects somewhat hoarsely, _Her._

—_her,_ you quickly amend, your voice growing even softer, _remember how that feels—and just imagine you and her in that situation, together. It wouldn't be for the first time, would it?—but it also won't be for the last._

A moment of silence, and then a new series of demented, wrenching sobs meet your words.

You whisper all the more quietly, your fingers starting to trail across the spherical outline of that armband you saw Akua making ages ago, years ago; the one he said he was making for Korra—_Those memories...they're not a finite line, Korra. They're a _circle._ You walk through them once, you walk them again, and you always come back to the start—but you find something different each time, in each one._ Your last words are barely more than a tickle of your breath against her ear. _And a circle is eternal. There is no stop, there is no start. Just a loop._

You don't have a sense of exactly how much time has passed, but after a while, Korra's sniffles begin to taper away and she's just sitting quietly in the cradle of your arms, a broken and crumpled mess. You silently continue to hold her and watch the sun sink below the horizon and watch the stars wink into existence one by one.

And once the sky has colored itself a dark, dark blue with glittering bits of fire strewn all across its shadowy folds, you bow your head down and whisper in her ear, _Hey, Korra?_

She licks her chapped lips and looks up at you with the hint of a plea in her shattered blue gaze—_Asami...I—_

And you put a finger to her moving lips to stop the beginnings of what would have been an undoubtedly awkward, bumbling apology that would have made you feel a lot better or worse about yourself (either way was possible), and you simply say to her, _You cared. You just cared, Korra._

_But I—_

You shake your head, and she crumples lifelessly into your lap. You cup your hands around either side of her tear-streaked face and gently tilt her head up so it's bathed in the quavering light of the stars above—

_Korra—look at the sky._

A moment of thick silence.

Then you whisper—

_The stars are out._

...

_Asami,_ Korra says after a few moments, and when you glance at her, she's not looking at the stars, but at you.

_Shh._

_Asami, I—_

You nudge her gently with an elbow, and then tip your head up.

_No, listen to me._ She's propped herself up now on her elbows, her eyes still puffy and red and wet, but there aren't any new, telltale tear tracks running down her cheeks. _I...owe you an explanation._

_Korra, you don't have to explain anything to me._

But she silences you with a cold finger pressed against your lips—_I do. There's so much to say—too much to feel. I—I need to tell you the truth. _She hesitates for a mere second, and suddenly she's so close that you can count every eyelash, feel her warm breath puffing into your face.

Presses a chaste kiss against your lips.

_I had to do that,_ she murmurs, still staring into your eyes, _once. Just once._ Shakes her head, then sits back promptly, her cheeks slightly flushed.

_Asami...I've, um, never told you...completely about Akna, have I?_

You're still in a half-state of shock, your fingers gaining a mind of their own and floating hesitantly up to press against your mouth, but you notice it anyway. It's sad, and barely perceptible. But it's still there.

Her blue eyes are shining brightly, but the gleam is not from tears. Stars swimming in the midnight blue of the sky and ocean, the ruddy golden glow of the city beyond.

The faintest of smiles rides upon her lips.

.

(**xxiv.** breathe)

.

The sound of approaching footsteps, muted thumps landing upon the dusty floor of the flat, wakes Akua up from his troubled sleep. Pushing his knuckles into his eyes, he vigorously attempts to rub the sleep clinging stubbornly onto his lids and forces them up, as to take in the hazed, blurry image of someone standing over him.

_Korra?_ he drowsily whispers._ Did you go? Are you okay now?_ His tongue thickened by fatigue, words slurring around each other as if they're being stirred in a pot of soup, he draws his elbows back and struggles to prop himself up on the thin bedroll.

She doesn't respond immediately, only looks down at him with her arms loosely hanging by her side, hands limp—tired and crushed. Then she holds those arms out, like he's still five and she was going to carry him, drooling and snoring, to his bed—

—and Akua rises from his mat and hugs her fiercely back.

Together, they stay like that—arms entwined tightly around each other, Akua's head buried in Korra's shoulder—for a few blissfully empty moments.

_Korra?_ he softly says into her shoulder.

Her voice is weighed down with disillusionment and unshed tears. _Yeah?_

_I don't think you're unimportant._

A warm, if distantly stilted and confused laugh tumbles out past her lips—_And who ever said I was unimportant?_

_You did._ Akua's fingers momentarily push down into her shoulder blades as he pulls Korra down to have her sit beside him on the bedroll.

To the casual observer, Korra didn't react to his simple statement at all, but Akua is looking at her facial expression, trying to decipher the hidden secrets behind that mask. He sees her eyes flicker momentarily to the right, before she snaps her gaze back to him. Her tone is thinly layered with warning.

_...Akua, please...I don't want to talk about it..._

He shakes his head resolutely. _But I do. And...and I will._

Then, he looks up into Korra's face—her lips still downturned into the faintest of frowns—he looks at her with wide and honest blue eyes, the faint beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

There is a hollow pause, permeated only by the dim sound of the wind breathing in the background.

_I think that the world still needs you,_ he whispers. _Truly._

She doesn't respond, but her arms subtly tighten around his thin frame.

_Still needs you,_ he repeats gently, yet with force, _still needs an Avatar._

The silence is pregnant with tension.

And then Korra sighs and drops her head down in apparent acquiescence.

_Maybe,_ she only says quietly, _maybe._

And Akua senses that this is about as close as he's going to get regarding this whole, very messy and very complicated Avatar subject.

So he drops it.

But he keeps on holding onto her, arms wrapped around her torso, cherishing the warmth and the steady beating of her heart—the fact that she's the one dependent constant in his life, the one that he _knows _he will always be able to rely upon, whether the times are sad or happy, dark or light—that Korra, against all odds, is still here and still with him, still _alive_. He cherishes her; loves her above anything else living in the world—knows that she truly, mindlessly, wholeheartedly cares about him—and after all the two of them had been through with each other, after all he has seen her do for him, he knows that he strongly cares for her, too.

It's quickly approaching, and it's inevitable—and the very thought is somewhat puerile, something that a boy at his age should not quite be feeling as if he's being hit with a sledgehammer—yet still he dreads the bleak moment when he will finally have to let her go.

.

_well, i remember when_

_you looked me in the eye, my friend_

_back in no time, you said_

**_a thousand years ago_**

.

(**xxv.** time)

.

At nineteen, studying at the prestigious University of Republic City, he still dreams about Akna.

Aana and Ata have since passed into the realm of the spirits over the course of the years, years that wash over him as quickly as a flowing stream.

Partly due to his own urgings, his sister has finally turned herself over to the Four Nations as the Avatar, albeit at the relatively old age of twenty and still stung with a lingering grudge—as a result, she stoically refuses to come into contact with the White Lotus after the revelation that Aeton had given.

Akua can understand her sentiment. It's what he would've done. And he supposes that Korra would be happier traveling around the world solo to master the four bending arts (and learning them in a _very_ unconventional order, traveling to the Fire Nation first for some vague—and Akua suspected untruthful—reason she alluded to as _not wanting to be another statistic_), as she's currently doing right now, than be cooped up in some huge compound the White Lotus had built off in the deep recesses of the Earth Kingdom. The last letter Akua had received from her, she was complaining about how dreadfully hot the summer in the Fire Nation was and devoted an entire paragraph describing, in painstakingly meticulous detail, how she had managed to burn tea in front of a scandalized General Iroh the Second, something or the other. But she sounded pleased enough with her firebending training and promised to come back to the city as soon as possible to visit him, which Akua was certainly glad to hear, given that she had now been gone from his life for an odd six months and he had never been parted from her that long.

"...Akua?"

He jumps in his seat at the vaguely familiar tone, whipping around to stare at a young woman with long, black glossy waves of hair tumbling down her back and bright green eyes, green eyes that he always used to look into back in his days of primary school.

"Asami?"

She smiles and settles down next to him on the bench. "Hi, Akua. You attend the university, too?"

He nods. "Yes."

Asami looks like she's hesitating, deciding whether or not she should say what she looks like she's about to say, and the apparently decides in favor—"Actually, I've been hoping to see you some time."

"You have?" Akua quietly asks, sweeping a few stray bangs away from his eyes and peering at her with mild curiosity.

"Yes," and Asami draws this word out slightly, "I've been meaning to ask—do you ever miss your sister?" And she hesitates, "Akna?"

And the blue-eyed boy sharply inhales and reels back from Asami as if she's lit a two-ton crate of firecrackers in front of him, _"What?"_

"Korra told me," Asami explains quickly, holding her hands up in a gesture of peace. "In the playground. After...after, well, Yakuza confronted her that last time in the fight arena. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you like that."

Akua takes a deep breath—"...Yes," he eventually says, with a soft and plaintive touch to his voice, "I do miss her. I miss Akna very much. More than anyone could ever imagine."

Asami looks at you from beneath her long eyelashes, one hand absently tucking a strand of loose black hair behind her ear. "But you've accepted her passing, haven't you?" she asks, and her voice isn't as sympathetic as Akua had expected it to be, or even overly soft—but it's almost matter-of-fact. Straight and direct and clearly _honest_ in a way that, for all her love and ministrations Korra never truly was, and Akua isn't sure whether he appreciates or hates Asami simply _saying_ things the way they are, instead of elusively dancing around the main point.

And so he opens his mouth and says quietly, "No one has ever asked me that."

"I know," and Asami gives you a small smile before she flicks a page over in her sociology textbook, her bright green gaze slowly sliding down to stare at the hardcover in her lap, "I understand. I know that people mean well when they offer apologies to me because I lost my mother, but I never understood why they apologized so much. It wasn't as if they were the ones who killed her," she pauses here to make a mark in her book, and then says frankly, "I didn't want people fussing over me. I know that the world has always viewed me as a daddy's little girl, especially after Mom died, but I can and will handle myself...I've—I've moved on from her death." A touch of melancholy enters her tone; still she looks up to stare at Akua with frank and honest green eyes, "I still love her, you know,"she states, her voice turning quieter, "I still go to the playground as often as I can, where some of my best memories of her remain."

Akua looks down at his hands.

He's told himself that he doesn't want to move on from Akna's death, because to him, _moving on_ feels like it means that he's finally sealing shut the truthfulness of her death, means that he's accepted the fact that he'll never see Akna again. And this thought repelled him; revolted him. He never wanted to think that she was totally gone from this world, never wanted to let go of the small, heatless fire still spluttering weakly inside his heart, the fire that he clung on to like a dying man, flames that he deluded himself with—believing that she was still there, believing that one day he would wake up besides Akna and it would all have been nothing more than a bad dream.

But she's left him. Akna's passed on into the Spirit World and has been there for so many years now. He's always known it—he didn't want to confront it. He still doesn't want to confront it. Korra isn't even with him now; she's halfway across the world in the Fire Nation, occupied with firebending training while somehow managing to achieve the impossible feat of burning tea. Akua knows that she still privately blames herself for the incident and knows that she will until her dying day. His eldest sister, as he had learned over the years, was horribly obstinate in that way.

But he isn't. He's open to change. He's so sick and tired of it all—sick and tired of withdrawing into his shell and hiding from the rest of the world because he still clings to the shadows of the past and doesn't want to let it go.

He loves Akna, but he knows that it's time to leave her death to become a thing of the past. He's going to miss seeing her, hearing her, but he doesn't think he will ever stop feeling her next to him, holding his hand, watching over him.

"You know," Asami muses quietly as if she's reading Akua's mind, now completely ignoring the sociology textbook sitting pathetically in her lap, "Korra once told me, ages ago, around the time when we first met that she loved the concept of eternity. That she hated death. I didn't really understand what she meant back then—I told her that death was a form of eternity. And you know...it is, but now that I think about it, I don't believe that's what she really meant when she said _eternity_. No, no, it definitely isn't...I think...it's something more like the bond I had with my mother. The bond you had with Akna.

"Over the past years, the feeling of my mother's warmth and comfort has still not left me. They still exist, because I still remember her. The memories and the relationship we had still survive, and because of that, so does she. She will never truly leaves me unless I forget her, unless I forget what the two of us shared. And I will never let that bond be broken, and so, we are always connected.

"I still hear her when I wake up. I feel her when I go outside and look at the city, the mountains, the sky, the sun, the moon—and the stars. She is present in everything that reminds me that I am still alive because of her. The link between the two of us was so strong, it couldn't possibly be destroyed by something like death, and I'm sure that yours and Akna's was the same. They'll both be with us for as long as we remember what we all shared. We'll always be together."

"...Always," and the quietly-spoken word slides out past Akua's parted lips and floats away with the cool breeze.

_Always together. Blowing my hair in the wind. Heating me with the sun and cooling me with the snow. Watching over me from the stars. Comforting me when I am scared and hugging me when I am happy. Still with me. Still here._

From by his feet, crinkled brown leaves are stirred from their resting spots by the breeze and twirl up into the air, a small twister of dead plant matter, before the wind relinquishes its grip and lets the leaves float down to the ground once more.

Akua peels his gaze away from the leaves to look at Asami.

_...Spirits, what do you say to people like her?_

A wan smile flickers around the edges of his lips.

"Thank you."

_Thank you, thank you._

_That's what you say._

.

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**fin**

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**end notes** | ahh, that's it. :) i really enjoyed writing **Chasing Serendipity**—it's my favorite work to date—and i hope you enjoyed reading too! :D

as always, please read/rate/review/fav! they're all appreciated very much. :3


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